Captioning Videos for ICaP Courses

Captioning Videos in Kaltura Mediaspace

First, upload your video file and request computer-generated captions using the following steps: 

1. Log in to Kaltura Mediaspace. Select the “Guest” icon in the upper right corner, then “Login.” You’ll need to use BoilerKey for this step. 
2. Upload your video to Kaltura by selecting the “Add new” menu in the upper right, then selecting “Media Upload.” Nearly any type of audio or video format works. 
3. Fill in the name and a brief description.
4. Save the video, then select “Go to media.”
5. Wait for the video to complete processing, which will take a few minutes.
6. Select the “Actions” menu (below the media on the right side) and click “Caption & Enrich.”
7. Select “Machine” under the Service dropdown, “English” for Source Media Language, and “Captions” for Feature. Click “Submit.”
8. Using the “Actions” menu, change the video to “Published” so it’s available for students to view. 

Next, edit your captions for accuracy. There are two methods:

1. Once your mechanical captions have been generated, click the “Actions” dropdown menu, and then click “Caption & Enrich.” Under “Existing Requests,” you’ll see a pencil icon in the right column. Click the icon to edit your captions.

1. On your “My Media” page, click the “edit” icon next to the video.
2. Download the caption file by selecting the “Captions” tab and then clicking the “download” icon.
3. Save the file, and open it in a text editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (MacOS). You can open the file with Word, but you must save it as plain text when you’re done. You can do this by selecting the “.txt” file type when saving.
4. The caption file is a plain text file. Every two lines of captioning looks something like this: 

   17
   00:01:09,013 --> 00:01:13,623
   let's get into accessibility it's a legal
   requirement yes but it's both more and

5. The first two lines (the numbers) are the time code. You don’t need to edit those. 
6. Edit the next two lines. If you have a script, you can copy and paste from the script, deleting the auto-generated text and keeping only the time codes:

   17
   00:01:09,013 --> 00:01:13,623
   Let's get into accessibility. It's a legal
   requirement, yes, but it's both more and

7. Once you are done, go back to Kaltura Mediaspace. Click the edit icon next to your video (as shown in step 1 above), select the “Captions” tab, and select “Upload captions file.”
8. Click “Browse,” select the edited captions file you saved, and wait for it to upload. Click “Save.”

Other Captioning Options

Pre-Captioned Videos

• Purdue Library Video Tutorials includes videos on visual literacy, information literacy, research, databases, and more.
• Purdue OWL’s YouTube Channel contains over 100 videos on topics ranging from grammar to citation styles to assignment-specific instruction.
• Other sources (let us know if you find some great video resources!)

Transcription Software

• Otter.ai turns audio or video files into transcripts with very good accuracy. Up to 600 minutes a month for free. You can use this to offer students a transcript or use the transcript to create a caption file in Kaltura.

Video Express