Official YouTube Blog: captions

Captions for all: more options for your viewing and reading pleasure

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

announced caption supportuploaded more than 1.6 million videos with captionsenabled automatic captions for 135 million videossince July 2011For YouTube viewersMore languages:JapaneseMoviesShowsSearch for videos with captions:Caption settings:Broadcast caption support:demo from CPCthose available from The Walt Disney StudiosFor YouTube creatorsMore supported formats:MPEG-2 caption import:Public.Resource.OrgMany of the DVDs and VHS tapes lying around in our vaults and attics--particularly those that were produced by governments and others that care about accessibility of their videos--already have Closed Captions embedded in them. Pulling that information out automatically and making it visible on YouTube means that these videos will continue to be accessible to new generations of viewers.published rulesKen Harrenstien, software engineer, recently rented “Cars 2” and was ecstatic to see its awesome captions.

Happy Birthday Automatic Captions! Celebrate with more videos and higher quality

Friday, November 19, 2010

we launched auto-captions for everyonelaunch early and iterate

People have watched video with automatic captions more than 23 million times, and have automatically translated captions more than 7.6 million times.

The number of manually-created caption tracks has more than tripled thanks largely to automatic caption timing technology.

Just recently, we’ve reduced the error rate in our speech recognition algorithms by 20%

tremendous challenge of scale35 hours of videointroduced automatic caption timingYouTube Data APIYouTube Ready qualification program

smartphoneAlways show automatic captionsinteractive transcript button

Ken Harrenstien, Caption Jedi, recently watched "Sign Language from the Space Station"

YouTube answers your questions about “YouTube Worldwide”; next topic is advertising

Monday, July 19, 2010

we began in Aprilpartnerships

YouTube channelModeratorMia Quagliarello, Product Marketing Manager, Community, recently watched “Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10.”

Release Notes: processing status, share to Buzz, and more

Friday, July 2, 2010

Processing progress status:

AutoShare to Buzz:here

Results badging:

New captions feature: Captions are a key part

The YouTube Team

Professional caption services get “YouTube Ready”

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Captions ensureauto-translatecreating captions

DCMP's current list of YouTube Ready vendors

Have passed a caption quality evaluation administered by the DCMP

Have a website and a YouTube channel where you can learn more about their services (see playlist below)

Have agreed to post rates for the range of services that they offer for YouTube content. Typical rates range from $2/minute for a transcript to $10/minute for full professional captions.

Help CenterDCMP's page

Naomi Bilodeau, Caption Evangelist, recently watched "Deaf Mugger."

Art Imitates Life: Re-enacting Prop 8 Trial on YouTube

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

YouTube channelWhat is the inspiration behind MarriageTrial on YouTube?We realized on January 13, when the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the broadcast of California’s Proposition 8 trial, that this was really significant. When the American public was actively prevented from accessing these public proceedings on YouTube — precisely because it is so accessible — well, that’s a flat-out dare. We had to fill the void. We both believe that citizens should have access to the judicial process that will likely determine the future of marriage equality for our entire country.

First video in the series:

How has YouTube helped meet the goals of your project?
There is really no better venue for 60+ hours of film. Many blogs and news media websites have embedded our videos. Because of this, our coverage has become an integral part of the media’s reporting on the trial. Ultimately, this serves our primary goal, which is to bring transparency to the court process.

We have followed behind the scenes of the trial, as well. When the Defendant-Intervenors filed Motions to Strike testimony, we were able to “red-line” the proposed strikes, guiding people to the excerpts the motion sought to exclude from the official record. In fact, our re-enactment will remain accessible, regardless of what may be redacted from the official transcript. That is an extraordinary victory for transparency in our judicial process.

YouTube’s “time seek” functionality allows us to link evidence that is introduced in the trial. Most of our viewers are active consumers of the information, many of them reading along with the transcripts and searching for further references to each witness’s testimony. Yet many others just run the videos in the background. One of our subscribers, who cranks up her speakers and cleans the house, told us she considers our channel better than the books on tape.

Has the amount of attention been a surprise?
We were astonished at the press coverage we received, from local and national media. The international press, too, took a great interest in our project. The fact that they could access our video on YouTube made it very easy to cover and most TV and radio outlets broadcast clips directly from our YouTube channel. In a way, our YouTube Channel served as an Electronic Press Kit (EPK), which saved us quite a bit of time and marketing money.

We were featured in the New York Times, then on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. Other national and international coverage followed. These reports commented on the way we were getting this video out to the masses…that our effort signifies a new type of “citizen journalism,” not only accessible to the world, but faster and cheaper to produce than traditional forms of media broadcast.

Describe the use of captions in your videos.
A few hours after we uploaded our first chapters, automatic captions miraculously appeared! We then formatted the official court transcripts and used YouTube’s auto-alignment tool to produce accurate captions. Our actors followed the transcripts word-for-word and the captions make it clear what a great job they did. It was so easy to provide captions, which, traditionally, can be very expensive (often prohibitively) for filmmakers. The new Interactive Transcript feature is a great way for users quickly jump to specific parts of the video directly from the transcript.

Comprehension and retention of the concepts introduced by witnesses, for example, get a major boost when viewers can read along, without having to pull up the PDF transcript. And of course, the trial re-enactment is immediately available to people with hearing loss, as well as people whose native languages are not English. The auto-translate function makes these captions available in so many languages. We could never have even approached this level of accessibility as independent filmmakers.

If the ruling goes into appeals, will you continue with the re-enactments?
Yes. We plan to follow Perry v. Schwarzenegger to the U.S. Supreme Court. According to most experts, this court’s ruling will be appealed to the U.S. Ninth Circuit, regardless of whether it repeals or confirms California’s Proposition 8. From there, it will inevitably be appealed to the highest court. We expect the first appeal within six months or so, then for it to go to Washington, D.C. by next fall. We are already planning for those re-enactments. It’s a bit early to cast the Supreme Court justices just yet, but we know that is in our future.

Bottom line, this case as a landmark in America’s civil rights history. We are proud to have created this permanent record as a resource for generations to come. Its ultimate impact is tied to YouTube as an integral part in our country’s political and cultural tapestry.

Interview by Obadiah Greenberg, Strategic Partnerships, who recently watched “NASA Team Captures Haybusa Spacecraft Reentry.”

Marlee Matlin’s new YouTube show and visit to Google

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

“The real handicap of deafness lies not in the ear; it lies in the mind.” - Marlee Matlin, March 30 talk at GoogleMarlee MatlinI’ll Scream LaterMy Deaf Family

event last Novemberall usersadd manual captionsKen Harrenstien, Software Engineer, recently watched “Jason Molenda In the Net.”

Iraqi Voices: Voter Perspectives on Election Day

Monday, March 8, 2010

news reportsAl Jazeera EnglishplaylistVideo Your Vote

This video documents the actual voting experience in Iraq:

And this woman explains why she will not vote in this year's election:

If you're from Iraq or have thoughts about the Iraqi elections, upload your videos to the Al-Jazeera website (http://interactive.aljazeera.net/iraqelections) using YouTube Direct and your video might be shown on television.

Olivia Ma, News & Politics Manager, recently watched "التصويت الخاص للجيش (محمد الصالح" (with subtitles)

The Future Will Be Captioned: Improving Accessibility on YouTube

Thursday, March 4, 2010

recent studiescaption featureauto-captioning

While we plan to broaden the feature to include more languages in the months to come, currently, auto-captioning is only for videos where English is spoken.

Just like any speech recognition application, auto-captions require a clearly spoken audio track. Videos with background noise or a muffled voice can't be auto-captioned. President Obama's speech on the recent Chilean Earthquake is a good example of the kind of audio that works for auto-captions.

Auto-captions aren't perfect and just like any other transcription, the owner of the video needs to check to make sure they're accurate. In other cases, the audio file may not be good enough to generate auto-captions. But please be patient -- our speech recognition technology gets better every day.

Auto-captions should be available to everyone who's interested in using them. We're also working to provide auto-captions for all past user uploads that fit the above mentioned requirements. If you're having trouble enabling them for your video, please visit our Help Center: this article is for uploaders and this article is for viewers.

Hiroto Tokusei, Product Manager, recently watched "How to Eat Stick Candy Fast."

500 Videos from Davos Now With Captions

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Davos Debatessearch for captioned video on thedavosquestion
To turn on captions, hover over the arrow-shaped icon in the lower right corner of the YouTube player and click the caption button. Captions on The Davos Debates videos can also be automatically translated right in YouTube: choose "Translate Captions" from the caption menu to try machine translation to 50 different languages.
You can learn more about captions and subtitles here.Naomi Bilodeau, YouTube Captions team, recently watched, "The YouTube Davos Debate: "Redesigning an Important Cause."

YouTube's Top 10 Launches of 2009

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Did you know that we released more features in 2009 than in 2007 and 2008 combined? This made it the busiest year on record for the YouTube product and engineering teams. Some of these launches, like support for 1080p, made sizable splashes, while others, like "trending topics" appearing at the bottom of the browse page, went out with less fanfare. With so much going on, we wanted to pause before the new year begins to review the things that hopefully made the biggest impact on your overall YouTube experience:

Auto-Share - As part of our wider effort to integrate YouTube into the social and communication platforms you use every day, AutoShare automatically syndicates your YouTube activity to Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader.

1080p - In November, we unveiled support for videos in 1080p (aka "full HD"). Want to test it out? Check out this video.

Auto-Speech Recognition - Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, coupled with YouTube's captioning system, makes videos more accessible to the deaf and hearing impaired. This same speech recognition technology can create machine-generated captions, which can then be translated into 51 languages.

Mobile Website for Smartphones - Watching videos on -- and uploading videos from -- cell phones is more popular than ever. To meet this demand, we launched a new mobile website designed to make using YouTube on smartphones like the iPhone, G1 and Palm Pre a lot easier.

YouTube XL - YouTube XL optimizes YouTube for large screens. In addition to offering larger text and simplified navigation, XL has a continuous play feature, allowing you to search for a topic, hit "play" and then kick back for an uninterrupted viewing experience.

VEVO - VEVO.com is a partnership that blends Google and YouTube's technology with music videos from a broad catalog of artists from Universal Music Group, Sony Music and EMI. The site hopes to redefine the way people watch and engage with music online, as well as change the way the digital and music industries do business with each other.

Feather - Feather is a stripped-down version of the page on which any video plays. Without all but the basic features, the page loads more quickly and videos play back faster. Give it a whirl in TestTube or click here.

3D - In July, one of our engineers used his free time to implement easier viewing options for 3D videos on YouTube. Here's a brief overview video.

Real-Time Comment Search - In October, we released the ability to search YouTube comments in real-time. The comment appears on a continuously updated results page, and "trending topics" indicates the hottest topics of conversation on YouTube at that particular moment.

Shows & Movies - In April, we rolled out a destination sporting hundreds of movies and thousands of full-length TV episodes. Offerings have included film classics like Taxi Driver, Ghostbusters and the Spaghetti Western Trilogy, as well as current TV shows from broadcasters like C4 and Channel 5 in the UK.

Which of these features is your favorite? Please use the poll in the top right corner of this blog to let us know what you've found to be most useful in '09, or leave a comment below if there's another feature that had an important impact on your YouTube life.

Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, and John Harding, Engineering Manager

Innovation in accessibility

Thursday, November 19, 2009

easier

Auto-Timing: Auto-Captions: translated into 51 languagesUC BerkeleyStanfordMITYaleUCLADukeUCTVColumbiaPBSNational GeographicDemand MediaUNSWGoogleYouTube
Auto-caps is a continued step towards YouTube's goal of making video accessible everywhere (web, mobile, TV) and to everyone (other countries, languages, alternative access modes). It's also an example of using technology to enhance the video experience. For more details, please check this post on the Google Blog.

To learn more about how to use auto-caps and auto-timing, check out our help center article and this short video:

Hiroto Tokusei, Senior Product Manager, recently watched "(HD) 夜のゆりかもめ（新橋→豊洲） 01."

Update (11/29): On November 24, we posted a full-length video of this feature's announcement event in Washington, D.C. We have included English captions using the new auto-timing capabilities:

Official Blog