In my last post I explained that YouTube now add a machine generated interactive transcript to videos containing a lot of speech. This may sound like a good thing, but often the transcript does not make sense.
How to Add an Interactive Transcript
This short video shows how to add your own interactive transcript to your videos. You will need your transcription saved as a .txt file.
Why You Should Add an Interactive Transcript
While YouTube aren’t great at generating an accurate machine generated transcript, it is pretty good at matching the transcript to speech times. Your basic text transcript is then used to generate the closed captions on your video as well as the interactive transcript beneath it.
Using transcripts and closed captions:
- Increases usability, they’re ideal for people who are hard of hearing or have no sound on their computer
- Increases accessibility, both YouTube and Google have video search facilities with advanced search for videos with closed captions
- Improves your video SEO. Both Google and YouTube index the transcript – that is NOT an excuse to stuff it with your keywords!
Yes, you get these great advantages just from a basic transcript. If you already write scripts for your videos, simply save them as a .txt file ready for uploading.
Over to you…
Now you know how to add an interactive transcript to your YouTube videos will you still rely on the inaccurate machine generated transcript? Will you start using video more? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
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How to Add an Interactive Transcript to Your YouTube Videos (and Why You Should) [Video] by Jan Kearney
I didn’t know about this, what a great tool it is.
I’ll have to give it a go for sure.
Thanks for sharing.
I’m glad you found the video useful, I’d love to hear how you get on with adding transcriptions to your videos. Thanks for popping in, Phillipa and taking the time to comment 🙂
Adding a transcript to YouTube is so easy the way you present it in this short video, Jan. Thanks so much for the tutorial. I’ll have to give some thought to producing videos with this tool in mind. I certainly have plenty of material for the transcripts – now it’s just a matter of figuring out the best way to incorporate this with video. Backwards, I know, but that’s how I tend to think.
If backwards works for you, Nanette – go with it! Thanks for calling in and taking the time to comment 🙂
Great tips. I took a class on YouTube and not all of this was explained. But I liked all three areas that you went into and they are all important.
I’m glad you found the video useful, Shawn 🙂 Thanks for popping in and your comment.
Conincidence – I’d just noticed YouTube’s amusing attempt to provide a transcription of a poem I posted last night – and hadn’t realized you could edit it. Great tip Jan.
Hi Alan, I found you in spam and rescued you. Great to see you here and I’m glad you found the post useful. Hope everything is going well over at CTW 🙂
I always wonder how you consistently manage to come up with such useful resources Jan.
This is brilliant. Gonna get stuck in to this strait way many thanks. Always looking for ways to improve my You Tube vids.
Thanks for the great advice!!
cheers
xxxxcarlxxxx
Oh, I could say hours of dedicated research and thousands of pounds in coaching and courses… I’ll be honest, Carl! I read a lot of blogs and play with things till I fathom how it works 🙂
I’m glad you found it useful, let me know if adding an interactive transcription improves your video views 🙂