Transcribing and captioning are two significant aspects of video creation that can help with viewership, and helping viewers understand your content in simpler ways. These two methods are related, but have some differences as well.
In simpler terms ‘Transcribing’ refers to turning spoken speech or dictation into text either by writing manually or with the help of a computer. The transcribed text should be grammatically correct with proper sentence formation. Captioning refers to adding subtitles in the video in the form of chunks or broken lines in boxes known as caption frames.
Both transcribing and captioning have benifits. Here are some reasons why you would want to consider captioning or subtitling your videos.
The requirement of transcribing video to text
As explained above, transcribing is the formula of turning videos into texts. Transcribing and captioning help provide a better experience and benefit for users.
Moreover, some media companies and film organizations like Netflix, etc. are legally bound to add captions and transcripts in their videos by US law.
Transcribing and captioning can actually help you increase the viewers count on your videos and contents. These beneficial points are described and explained further below in this article.
Benefits of transcribing & captioning videos
Some of the most important and popular ones are as follows :
● Improve indexing from an SEO point of view
SEO or search engine optimization is the act of optimizing content to rank better on video search results. This can help you achieve more viewers or audience for your content.
By adding transcripts and captions, you can improve the indexing of your video in search engine optimization terms, which can help you rank for relevant search queries & gather a bigger audience.
● Benefits to people with hearing disability:
Over 466 million people around the world suffer from hearing disability. By captioning your videos you can help reach a large percentage of the world’s population that are affected by this.
● Flexible viewing
By keeping your videos available in more flexible formats, you can engage more viewers in more ways!
Some flexible viewing scenarios would be if you are in a loud place or if you are in a public place without headphones.
● Wider customer engagement and reach
One example of customer engagement within the same language, would be if you make your videos in the English language but with a US accent, foreign viewers who might speak English, but understand different variations of it would have a hard time hearing what you have to say. Adding captions would make it easier for viewers to listen and understand what you have to say.
● Enhanced comprehension
Viewers comprehension and understanding of content increases when captions are included. The benefits of this are that viewers become more interested, this is especially helpful in the case of non native language speakers, who may have a hard time understanding what’s being said.
The more engaged your audience is, the more they’ll be coming back!
● Enrich user experience
The audience feels more comfortable with the content with captions as it makes their understanding and concept more clear.
More than half of people with English as their second, or third language face difficulties in understanding the foreign accent. This is why, by having captions and transcripts, these issues can be removed and the users experience can be improved.
● Creates more lead opportunities
Creating more lead opportunities is another benefit that video content makers can have from captions and transcripts.
Getting more viewers will increase your motivation to create great content, which will increase the number of videos you put out!
● Easy access to foreign language translation
There are thousands of people and students who watch videos in a foreign language to learn the language. The best example of this is of RM, the leader of the boyband B.T.S., who revealed that he learned English by watching the show F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
In such scenarios, captions and transcripts are very beneficial as they facilitate the learning experience and keep viewers sticking around for more
● Elevates average time spent on the websites
When the user finds the video content more approachable, they’ll spend more time on your website without even realizing it!
Transcription & Caption with Maestra
There are different ways to caption and subtitle videos, it’s possible to caption and subtitle your videos manually by hand, but if you’re looking for an easier and faster way to reach more people, using an automatic transcription and captioning service, like Maestra, can be a great option.
Maestra provides an automatic online service that can automatically generate captions and transcriptions for your audio and video content in just minutes. All accounts come with 30 minutes of free captioning, subtitling, and transcription so you can see for yourself what Maestra can do for you!
Author Bio
Aaron Johnson is head of business development and content creation at Maestra, an automatic cloud-based editing software that can transcribe, caption, and voiceover video & audio files to 50+ languages in just minutes, enabling content creators to reach a wider audience all over the world.
Website – https://maestrasuite.com/