One advantage to uploading your videos to Kaltura instead of Google Drive is that Closed Captioning (CC) text is automatically created and applied.  For the most part, Kaltura does a good job of recognizing your pronunciation and transcribing the words correctly.  However, the transcription is never 100% accurate and may need some corrections.

Editing the Closed Captioning for a video in Kaltura

To edit the CC of your video, start by logging into your Kaltura account and browse to the media page for the video that you would like to edit.

On the media page for the selected video, click the Actions dropdown menu and then the Captions and Enrich button.

Selecting the Kaltura CC Editor

Under the Existing Requests, click the edit button (pencil) for the CC file that you would like to edit.

screen capture of the UX for existing requests in Kaltura

You are now presented with the Closed Captions Editor interface.

screen capture of the Kaltura editor interface
The interface has the following key sections: 1) Captions language selector, 2) Global Search and Replace tool, 3) Speaker identification tool, 4) CC timeline (sync’d with video player), 5) Video player (sync’d with CC timeline)

The Editor Interface Tools

Lets take a closer look at the tools available in the CC Editor.

The Closed Caption File Selector

If you have multiple CC files, you can change which file to edit.

Kaltura CC Editor language selector

The Global Search and Replace tool

Use this tool to correct capitalizations of words or to correct a word/phrase that the auto captioning tool consistently got wrong.

Kaltura CC editor search and replace tool

The Speaker Identification tool

If there are multiple speakers in the video, you can use this tool to “bulk” identify specific CC items.  Just place a check in the box next to the timeline items that you would like to tag, Add the Speaker name to the text box, and click the Add button.

Kaltura CC Editor Speaker Assign tool

The CC Timeline and Video Player

The timeline and video player are synchronized and work together in the editing process.  There are a couple of approaches to editing the CC text. 

First, if the video script is fresh in your mind and you can easily remember the correct wording, you can just scroll down the timeline and edit the text as you scroll.  If you see a timeline entry that needs correcting but you are unsure of the wording that was used in the video, click into the textbox on the timeline and then click the play button on the video player.  The video should jump straight to the corresponding timestamp and start playback so that you can hear the spoken words.  When you have made the necessary changes, continue down the timeline.

Kaltura CC Editor timeline
The timeline has the following edit items: 1) Start time of the item, 2) End time of the item, 3) The transcribed text, 4) Delete button for the item

ou can also click the play button on the player and the video and caption timeline will play in sync with each other.  As you see a caption that needs updating, simply click in in the corresponding caption textbox and type to edit.  The video should stop playing and wait until you click play again.  The video player also has buttons to jump forward and backward 5 seconds and a checkbox to stop the auto-scroll of the timeline.

Kaltura CC Editor Video Player

Saving

When you have completed scrolling through the timeline, it is important to remember to click the Save button to avoid losing your work.  For a long video, it is a good idea to click save often during the editing process.  The Revert link will undo all changes since your last save, so use cautiously.

Kaltura CC Editor Save button

Alternate Approach

I have found that editing the captioning of a long videos using the Kaltura CC Editor to be somewhat of a tedious workflow for me.  So, my technique is to download the CC file (a *.srt file type) and edit it using my local text editor, Notepad for PC and Textedit for Mac.  I will play the video in separate window while editing the captioning with the text editor.  After completing the changes, I then upload the new file to the media page and delete the original capture file (after backing it up of course).

The text in the *.srt  file looks like the example below.  If you examine the first three lines, you will see an integer indicating the CC item number (1).  The next line is the start (00:00:01,250) and end (00:00:03,210) video timestamps for the CC item.  Finally, the next line, or two, is the CC text that will appear in the video (Now that would be created) .  The pattern repeats for each successive CC item.

[su_box title=”SRT Code:” style=”noise” box_color=”#333333″ title_color=”#FFFFFF” radius=”3″ class=””]

1
00:00:01,250 –> 00:00:03,210
Now that would be created

2
00:00:03,210 –> 00:00:04,680
the physical temperature circuit

3
00:00:04,680 –> 00:00:06,060
using the Arduino.

[/su_box]

[su_box title=”TIP:” style=”noise” box_color=”#333333″ title_color=”#FFFFFF” radius=”3″ class=””]

Editing the CC file in your local text editor also allows you to delete larger sections of CC items in bulk instead of the single item-by-item deletion found in the CC Editor.  This can be useful for when the automatic CC transcription turns musical notes into words.  The missing item numbers do not affect the CC once re-uploaded.

[/su_box]

Downloading  and Uploading Captions Files

To download the *.srt file, go to the media page, click the Actions dropdown, and then the Edit button.

Kaltura Actions and Edit button

Then on the media edit page click the Captions tab.

Kaltura metadata editor page

On the Captions tab, you can:

  1. Make a captions file the default for the video when there are more than one.
  2. Delete a captions file.
  3. Download a captions file.
  4. Upload a new (updated) captions file.

One advantage to uploading your videos to Kaltura instead of Google Drive is that Closed Captioning (CC) text is automatically created and applied.  For the most part, Kaltura does a good job of recognizing your pronunciation and transcribing the words correctly.  However, the transcription is never 100% accurate and may need some corrections.

Editing the Closed Captioning for a video in Kaltura

To edit the CC of your video, start by logging into your Kaltura account and browse to the media page for the video that you would like to edit.

On the media page for the selected video, click the Actions dropdown menu and then the Captions and Enrich button.

Selecting the Kaltura CC Editor

Under the Existing Requests, click the edit button (pencil) for the CC file that you would like to edit.

screen capture of the UX for existing requests in Kaltura

You are now presented with the Closed Captions Editor interface.

Categories: Accessibility, Kaltura

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