Amara Captions - Doing the Work

Last updated by parker.argyle 4 months ago

For this project, you start with an uncaptioned, inaccessible USU YouTube video and turn it into an inclusive, captioned video. We will then publish your captions so that they are available for anyone.

Resources

Welcome to Amara Captions : A collection of a ll of the resources and information about getting started.

Caption Guidelines : USU’s caption standards. Read over these before starting a project so we’re all on the same page!

If this is your first time doing captioning with us, please start with a few short videos that are 3-5 minutes long. There will always be short Athletics videos to do :)

Steps to Caption a Video

Now that you understand our captioning guidelines, you are ready to caption a video!

Select a Video from the USU Video Captions Monday Board

Identify a video that needs to be done from the Amara Video Captions Monday Board .

Assign yourself to that video:

Add the video duration in minutes under “Length” if it has not already been added (round to the nearest minute).

Mark the status as “In Progress” and the date you started should automatically populate.

Add Video to Amara

Go to the Amara Workspace page

Click “+Add Videos”

Enter the YouTube URL and Language (usually English) and click “Add to Amara Public”.

The video has now been added to Amara Public. Take a moment to add the URL of the Amara video to Monday in the “Amara Link” column:

Now you are ready to start writing captions! There are a few ways to do this. This is always up for revision, so if you find a better way of captioning that is quick or more efficient, let us know!

Captioning from an Existing File

Most of the time, there should be a starter caption file already in the Monday board for you to start from. To download the file, click on the file icon in the “SRT File” column and select the download icon.

To upload to Amara, select the three dots next to “Add/Edit Subtitles” and choose the option “Upload subtitles”.

Then select “Browse” and upload the SRT file from your computer.

Add a link to the video to the “Amara Link” column of the Monday Board.

Edit the uploaded caption file to make sure it matches the video and follows the Caption Quality Standards .

You don’t have to caption an entire video in one sitting— at any time, you can click “Save draft” and return to the file when needed.

Once finished, return to the Monday board and mark the video as “Ready for Review” and move onto the next unclaimed video.

Captioning from YouTube’s Auto Captions

Captioning from Scratch

If there is not an existing caption file, you may need to caption the video from scratch.

Click “Add/Edit subtitles” in the Amara video page.

Select “English [en]” and click “Add”:

Transcribe the speech in the video and set the timings.

You don’t have to complete an entire video in one sitting- at any time you can click “Save draft” and return to the file when needed.

Once finished, return to the Monday board and mark the video as “Ready for Review” and move onto the next unclaimed video.

Responding to Feedback

After you have submitted your video for review, a reviewer will look through it and give some feedback as needed.

When you receive feedback, your video will be marked as “Feedback Given” and there will be an update with comments from the reviewer.

To see the update, click on the item and a sidebar will appear.

You can also see it in your Monday notifications - click the bell in the navigation bar of the screen.

You can review the feedback and respond with a comment or questions of your own! It might help to tag the reviewer, which can be done by typing @ and the first few letters of the person’s name to find the right person.

Once you have addressed the feedback to the best of your ability, mark the “Status” as “Ready for Follow Up Review” and move on to any other videos you have feedback on.

The reviewer might feel there is more to be fixed and give you more feedback - if so, simply repeat the above steps. If everything looks good and your captions are ready to be published, they will mark it as “Complete”. You are all done!