Using Movie Captioner to Create Captions for YouTube

Movie Captioner allows you to create captions for a video and then export a caption file that can be uploaded to Youtube. What movie captioner does is load your video and replay a few seconds of the video over and over allowing you to type what you hear.

This tutorial covers the Movie Captioner interface, captioning your video, exporting captions for YouTube, and uploading captions to YouTube.

Movie Captioner Interface

The first thing you will need to do is open up Movie Captioner.

In the left corner of this window, you will see a blue screen with a black box underneath it.

When you load your movie, your movie will play in the blue screen, and you will type your captions in the black box.

Underneath the window where you type your captions is a set of options to change the font.

Use these options to change the font size, type, color and background color for your captions.

Right below the font options is options for changing the interval of your captions.

By default, the interval is set to 4 seconds. What this means is that Movie Captioner will play and loop 4 seconds of video at a time. So you would type your captions to cover that 4 seconds of time. You can change the amount of time by clicking on the arrows or clicking in the white box and typing in your own interval.

On the right side of the screen you will see a bunch of rows broken up into 3 columns.

As you add your captions, they will appear in this window.

Starting to Caption your Video

To start captioning a video, you will first need to load the video into Movie Captioner.

Press the Load Movie button on the top left corner of the screen.
Select your video.

When your movie loads it will appear in the window on the left side of the screen.

Play the video and pause it right before you want to start adding captions.
Press the Start button at the bottom of the window.

Your video will start to loop for the amount of seconds you set as your interval.

Start typing your captions in the black box underneath where your video plays.

Type your captions in the black box below the video player.

When you’ve finished a caption, press the Return key on your keyboard.

When you do, Movie Captioner will automatically move to the next interval of video and you can start to type your captions in for the next interval.

As you add your captions, you will see them appear on the right hand side of the screen.

Captions appearing on the right side of the screen in Movie Captioner

The times next to the captions correspond to the time in the video that the captions are for.

When you’ve finished captioning, you should have a list of captions with timecodes placed next to them.

Now you are ready to export your captions as a file that can be added to a YouTube video.

Exporting Captions for YouTube

Select Export from the top of the screen.
Select the option that says YouTube Captions.

When you do you will be prompted to give your Caption file a name.

Type in the name you wish to give your file.
Click Save. This .srt file is what will be uploaded to YouTube.

Uploading Your Captions to YouTube

Log in to YouTube.
Click on your user avatar in the top right corner of the page and select Creator Studio.

You will be taken to your YouTube Dashboard.

Select Video Manager in the menu on the left-hand side of your screen.

You will then be presented with all of the videos that you have uploaded to YouTube.

Find the video that you want to add captions to.
Click where it says Edit, right beside your video.

On the next page, there will be several tabs with information about your video.

Select the Subtitles and CC tab.

In this tab, click on Select Video Language.

YouTube defaults to English, but you can search for the language of your choice.

After you select your language, a new button will appear that says Add Subtitles or CC. Click on it, and then select your desired language from the drop down menu.

On the following screen, click the Upload a file button.

Next, under File Type, select Subtitles file.
Click Browse to find your caption file.

In the window that appears, find your .srt file that you exported from Movie Captioner.
Select it, and click Open in the bottom right corner of the window.

Select Upload, and your file will upload.

When it is done, your subtitles should appear to the right of your video, along with the appropriate times corresponding to the video. You can watch your video to make sure everything is correct, and edit each individual subtitle for any changes you need to make.

Once you are happy with your captioning, click Publish in the bottom right corner of the window.

YouTube will give you this notification, once your captions have been successfully published.

YouTube notification saying subtitles are published

That’s it! Now when you watch your video on YouTube you can select the Closed Captions option and your captions will appear on your video.