Instructional Continuity: Captioning for Live and Recorded Lectures

OVERVIEW

See also: Instructional Continuity: ZOOM

Using captioning in synchronous and asynchronous teaching is inclusive of all learners as it supports access for students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, visual learners, English Language Learners, and students with ADHD or learning disabilities, among others. There are some very user-friendly and easy ways to do this. Below you will find resources and tutorials to get started. We hope you will explore these options when you have time; and know you can reach out to us for help at any time.

ZOOM SETTINGS

You can record your live lectures to the cloud, and select options in your Zoom settings that will make it easy to create automatic transcripts and closed captions after the recording is posted. This is especially important for students who are deaf/hard of hearing, and also for students who may have missed the lecture, and students who rely on captions as a study aid.The following resources can help you select your Zoom settings before you begin your live lectures:

• Zoom: Automatically Transcribe Cloud Recordings (for closed captions for recordings)
• Enable Zoom Live Captioning: Learn how to enable the Live Automatic Transcriptions feature and update your live closed captioning settings in Zoom
• Change your Language on ZOOM (helpful for World Language instructors)
• See also: Instructional Continuity: ZOOM

TIPS TO GET STARTED

1. Regardless of which option you choose for delivering lectures,a good microphone is key for the best possible speech recognition accuracy. Samson Go mic is usually available on Amazon for around $30. If you plan to record at your laptop, you may be able to get by with simply using the web cam's microphone. But if you plan to walk around, you'll get better results with a microphone like the Samson Go mic or by wearing a wireless mic.
2. Verbally describe content in the slides or screens you are sharing with students. Sometimes there is degradation of video quality during screen shares, so this practice is especially important for online instruction. 
3. Allow students to ask questions in Zoom's chat interface; instructors should get in the habit of repeating those questions for all students attending via Zoom, as there may be some students who can't see the questions.

OTTER.AI

Video Demo from Otter team: Live transcribe Zoom meetings with Otter for Teams (must have a Team account)

Video Demo for Cal Poly users: Using Otter Teams account with Zoom for Live Captioning (must have a Team account)

Video Demo for Cal Poly users: Using Otter free account with Zoom for Live Captioning (to use with a free account)

Steps for Setup: Setting up and using Otter's Live Transcription in Zoom Meetings [PDF]

Otter.ai has an excellent live captioning feature. Cal Poly DRC purchased a limited number of Otter licenses to loan out to Deaf and Hard of Hearing DRC students during class for real-time captioning of lectures. Instructors can use Otter as well by creating your own account, that includes a free version with limited minutes. Then you can use Otter with Zoom to provide live captions during a Zoom lecture for all of your students. To do this, just open two windows, side by side, to display your presentation on the left side, and the Otter live transcription on the right side. Now all students can follow along. Alternately, you can share the Otter link with your students directly, so they can follow along on their own devices if they wish. Additionally, Otter can provide transcripts for audio recordings such as podcasts and interviews.

If you are interested in using Otter’s integrated Live transcription for Zoom, you can purchase an Otter for Teams license. That license subscription can be purchased on a monthly or annual basis. Alternatively, you can purchase a license for Otter Premium (educational discount is $4.99/month) and then you can manually share the link to Otter’s live transcription of your lecture with your students (e.g., post your live transcription link in Zoom chat or email it to your students).

Otter pricing plans

Otter pricing plans include a Free plan and a Premium plan. The Otter Help Center provides a comparison of plans with instructions for using Otter’s various features. The Free plan gives you 600 minutes of free transcription per month, allows transcription of videos up to 40 minutes in length, and up to 3 video/audio file uploads per month. By contrast, the Premium plan gives you 6,000 minutes of transcription per month, allows transcription of videos up to 4 hours in length, and an unlimited number of video/audio file uploads per month.

Otter and accents

Otter speech recognition recognizes a wide range of accents with English spoken as second language. They are leading in the industry with transcription with heavy accents, transcribing in noisy environments, and real-time transcription speed.

POWERPOINT ONLINE "PRESENT LIVE" SUBTITLES

Presenters using PowerPoint may also want to check out PowerPoint Online’s Present Live feature (in addition to Zoom’s live captions feature) because it allows participants to choose what language they want the live subtitles in (60 languages available to choose from). This feature also lets attendees go back over the previous slides at their own pace. A presenter could provide both Zoom’s live auto-captions/transcript and PowerPoint Online’s “Present Live” subtitles if they wanted to be thorough. Redundancy is good when it comes to providing access, especially since technology is known to “misbehave.”

PRESENTATION TRANSLATOR FOR POWERPOINT

Presentation Translator for PowerPoint provides an easy option to have the subtitles feature turned on, but not displayed for everyone, so individual students can choose to view them on their personal devices. DRC recommends all instructors using PowerPoint should at least turn on subtitles, then they can decide if they want to show them automatically to all students or let individual students decide if they want to see them on their own devices. Presentation Translator automatically creates a QR code and link that an instructor can share with their students at the beginning of the presentation. The link allows students to see the subtitles live on their own devices in addition to seeing the subtitles on the PowerPoint during the lecture. Students who have never used this before might try it and find it helpful. This is an easy way to promote inclusion in the online environment.

Presentation Translator Languages

Presentation Translator allows a speaker (e.g., instructor) to speak in any of the 10 supported speech languages – Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish – and subtitle into any one of the 60+ text translation languages. This could be helpful for world language instructors who are teaching any one of the 10 supported dictation languages above. (Otter currently only supports English.) So when it comes to using one of these tools for live captioning, world language instructors are better off using Presentation Translator.

• For more information see Using Microsoft Translator in a Presentation. Also see Screensharing a PowerPoint Presentation with ZOOM.
• For PC: Microsoft's Presentation Translator is a free add-on for PowerPoint (Windows software version only at this time). If it's not already in your software version of PowerPoint, you can download it here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=55024
• For Mac: If you use a Mac, the Presentation Translator feature is built into the Office 365 (online) version of PowerPoint: Present with real time automatic captions or subtitles in PowerPoint.
   

GOOGLE SLIDES

Google Slides live captioning: When you present Google Slides, you can turn on automatic captions to display the speaker's words in real time. This feature is available on Chrome devices in U.S. English. 

MICROSOFT TEAMS

Microsoft Teams also offers live captioning. With live captions, Teams can detect what’s said in a meeting, and present real-time captions for anyone who wants them.     

ZOOM RECORDINGS

• See also: Instructional Continuity: ZOOM
• ZOOM: Automatically Transcribe Cloud Recordings (for closed captions for recordings). If you record your lectures in Zoom, your recordings will use the audio transcription setting to created automatic closed captions. These need to be edited before sharing the recording link with your students.

SCREENPAL

• To access the free Cal Poly version, with limited storage and editing, log into your Cal Poly portal, and then go to https://screenpal.com/calpoly
• ScreenPal: Create your own personal account, with free and low-cost options that include better editing and hosting features
• ScreenPal tutorials: tutorials: Includes tutorials to help you create, edit, save, caption, and host your own videos
• ScreenPal Captioning: Closed Captioning: Step-by-step guidance to add captions to your recordings

OTTER AI

• Otter.ai: As mentioned above, Otter.ai is a great tool for captioning videos. Otter.ai includes a Free plan and a Premium plan. The Otter Help Center includes a comparison of plans, with instructions for using Otter’s various features. The Free plan gives you 600 minutes of free transcription per month, allows transcription of videos up to 40 minutes in length, and up to 3 video/audio file uploads per month. By contrast, the Premium plan gives you 6,000 minutes of free transcription per month, allows transcription of videos up to 4 hours in length, and an unlimited number of video/audio file uploads per month.

POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS

• Add Closed Captions or Subtitles to PowerPoint
• Publishing PowerPoint Presentation Videos to Microsoft Stream with automatic captions

CAPTIONING IN YOUTUBE

Please note that the YouTube interface is changing, so some of the tutorials below may not yet be up to date. This PDF tutorial, Video Captioning in YouTube [PDF], should be up-to-date. Additionally, YouTube limits uploads to recordings that are 15 minutes or less; if you have longer videos to upload, follow these steps: YouTube: Upload videos longer than 15 minutes

• Create a YouTube account and upload videos (instructions provided by YouTube help center)
• Captioning YouTube Videos (screenshot tutorials by the National Center on Disability and Access to Education)
• Add your own subtitles and closed captions (YouTube guide)

• Captioning YouTube Videos (video tutorial by the National Center on Disability and Access to Education)

MICROSOFT STREAM

Cal Poly provides all faculty, staff and students with Microsoft Stream free streaming service, as part of the Office 365 Suite. You can access Microsoft Stream here: Microsoft Stream. You must be logged into your Cal Poly portal to access Microsoft Stream. The videos at the top of the homepage demonstrate how to upload and embed videos. Microsoft Stream provides auto-captions which you can easily edit. You control the privacy settings for your videos. Find more tutorials below:

• Microsoft Stream Step-by-step Tutorials
• Generate automatic captions and a transcript for your Microsoft Stream Videos
• Add subtitles or captions to your Microsoft Stream Video
• Publishing PowerPoint Presentation Videos to Microsoft Stream with automatic captions
• Embed Microsoft Stream Video in Canvas Course

OPTIONS FOR LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH

You may be teaching in other languages, and looking for the best option for auto transcribing your speech. View the options below to see which options work best.

PRESENTATION TRANSLATOR

Presentation Translator for PowerPoint allows a speaker (e.g., instructor) to speak in any of the 10 supported speech languages – Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish – and subtitle into any one of the 60+ text translation languages. This is helpful for world language instructors who are teaching any one of the 10 supported dictation languages above.

OTTER

Otter.ai (more info in sections above) currently only supports English; however Otter recognizes a wide range of accents with English spoken as second language. They are leading in the industry with transcription with heavy accents, transcribing in noisy environments, and real-time transcription speed.

ZOOM

Change your Language on ZOOM: Zoom supports Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Korean.

CAL POLY CAPTIONING SERVICES

If someone else created a video you wish to use in class, such as a public video on YouTube, you cannot correct the captions or even turn on automatic captions if the video creator did not do so themselves, and did not provide you with editing access. If you don’t have access to a video to caption it (including non-YouTube videos), please visit Classroom Technologies Media Captioning page (Links to an external site.) and scroll down to Automatic Sync Technologies (AST). AST can caption online videos with the use of their "smart player,” a media player that synchronizes the URL of an online video with an AST caption file in order to present a captioned version of the online media, which you can place in Canvas or play in class. Lead time is 2 weeks, so make your requests well in advance of showing your video in class.

Additionally, if you want to pay AST for your own captioning services, you can still receive the CSU discount by completing this form: CaptionSync CSU System Account Sign Up. Once you complete the form, it is sent to Classroom Technologies admin for approval. Then you can submit your own videos, and they will be billed to you. You can ask what the lead time is for captioning; it is usually a few days.

REV.COM

Rev.com: This video captioning service provides caption files for videos that you have created, or public videos that allow you to create captions. Turn around time is 24 hours; cost is $1 per minute. You can then upload the captions to YouTube, or another hosting site such as Screencast.com, for quick captioning. Please note that many public YouTube videos do not allow others to provide captions, so check first before using Rev.com for videos created by others.