First create a raw transcript. Your transcript will have line breaks between each caption:

1. Manually create the caption by playing the video back and writing as much as you can. Don’t worry about messing up a line or two, the important part is getting the sections completed.

2. Repeat playback 1-2 times, and fill in the errors or missing sections until your caption is complete.

*Tip: Hit space bar to pause the video.

3. After completing your transcript, you’ll have something like the image.

Usually, this process can take up to 3x the length of the video, so 6-8 minutes for a 2 minute video.

Once you have created the transcript, you need to add the time codes and sync it to your video.

1. Go to YouTube’s My Videos section.
2. Choose Captions from the dropdown menu.

3. Upload the transcript you created.

Choose the language the caption is in and title it the name of the language. (English for English, 日本語 for Japanese, etc)

This is where things get fun.

Google will use their speech recognition software to match what is spoken to your transcript.

For details on how they do this, see this blog entry

Auto sync takes about 1-5 minutes, depending on the length of video. Once it finishes, your caption is ready.

If you download your transcript, you can see each caption is time-coded perfectly. It will be in the SBV format

YouTube’s auto-sync feature works perfectly most of the time, but it can fail on occasion.

Caution: Auto-sync does not work when there is background music or many people talking at a time. If you are working on a complex video, use more sophisticated services such as DotSub and Amara.

If you have more than one caption track for the video, you can then “Request Translation” from the same caption setting section of YouTube.

Choose source track, target languages and then choose between a translation service or sharing with a bilingual colleague or friend.

If you choose a translation service, you will be able to see the price and estimated time.

Gengo translation allows you to translate your captions into 33+ languages. You’ll be brought to the Gengo UI to confirm your video, languages, and more.

You can sign-up using your YouTube/Google account and pay for translation via PayPal or credit card.

When the translation is done, you will receive a notification from Google. You can go back to the caption setting screen, and approve your new finished translation.

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