Adding Closed Captions to video

#1

Recently I read instructions for adding captions in Chrome – they work! So now I’m trying to develop directions for other browsers to post on the webpage cwagaz.org but they seem not to work except on videos that have captions enabled. (CWAG is a water advocacy group.) Here is what I have found. Can anyone improve on these? Does CCaptioner work in Firefox?

Google Chrome

  1. Click 3 dots @ upper right of screen
  2. Click “Settings”
  3. Scroll to bottom & click “Advanced”
  4. Scroll to “Accessibility” & click “Live Caption” button
    Captions will appear in a black box on bottom of screen. Some words get mangled. For example CWAG may show as sea wag or Seewair

Apple Mac OS
(Note: This does not seem to work if captions have not been added to the video.)

  1. On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Accessibility, then click Captions.
  2. Do any of the following:
    Enable closed captions and SDH: Select the “Prefer closed captions and SDH” checkbox.
    Stop using closed captions and SDH: Deselect the “Prefer closed captions and SDH” checkbox.
    Create a style: Click the Add button , enter a name for the style, then change settings for the background and text. To have your style setting always used, deselect the “Allow video to override” checkbox.
    Edit a style you created: Select the style in the list, then click Edit.
    Delete a style you created: Select the style in the list, then click the Remove button

Apple iOS
Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
Tap on General.
Tap on Accessibility.
Under the Hearing section, tap on Subtitles & Captioning.
Turn On the option for Closed Captions + SDH.
Tap on Style in order to customize how closed captions work if you’d like.

Firefox
The browser addon CCaptioner might work. (We have not tested this.)

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#2

Thanks! For Chrome there are some variations depending on your OS. On Win10 for instance, it will redirect you to your PC’s captioning settings.

#3

Thanks for this! Could you please clarify - you mention that for Apple Mac there needs to be Cc added ( encoded in the file I assume) to the video. Does this also apply to iOS or does it add them on the fly.?

#4

RE: Could you please clarify - you mention that for Apple Mac there needs to be Cc added ( encoded in the file I assume) to the video. Does this also apply to iOS or does it add them on the fly.?

I did a bit of checking a few weeks ago to develop directions for people to get captions on videos. From what I found, ONLY Google Chrome (so far) will add these captions to videos that do not have captions included in the video. This includes YouTube, Zoom, etc.

With Chrome, I can get captions even if not included in the original video. Sometimes, I get two sets of captions (those included plus Chrome’s) but I can turn off either set.

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