Closed Captioning Versus Transcription: Which Is Best for Video Content?

One potential method to enhance the utility of your video is closed captioning and video transcription.

Extracting valuable information by subtitling or transcribing your video content increases video productivity, especially if you want to attract more viewers to your content.

However, some viewers prefer to watch captioned videos, unlike using video transcripts.

But which is which? Do you need video captions or transcripts to attract more viewers and keep them engaged?

Let's get to know more about this. 

This article explores the differences between closed captioning versus transcription for your video content.

Recommending which is the best method for your videos.

But wait a minute, why are the two terms confused so often?

Both methods involve converting video content into text, but they have different formats and somehow serve similar purposes. So, let’s look at them.

What’s Closed Captioning and Transcription for Video Content?

Closed captioning for videos is the generation of a text summary of the video content.

It provides comprehensive information about your video, including its images, scenes, video characters, and the emotions of the speakers.

Closed captions are displayed on the screen as the video plays.  

But how do these video features get to display on the video? What you need is to activate the closed captions for your video.

When you open your video, closed captions do not appear as they would like open captions within your video.

The video user typically activates closed captions by clicking a button available in the video dashboard. 

Typically, you need to look for the 'CC' icon, which is usually a double ‘C’ symbol located at the bottom right corner of your video player.

The button allows you to activate the closed captions for your video. You can also find this icon in the menu settings of your video.

On the other hand, video transcription is the process of converting spoken words in a video into written text.

It may include dialogue, narration, or any other spoken content. Video transcription produces a text document that accurately corresponds to the spoken content of the video.

So, video-closed captions are the text displayed on the screen as people continue to watch the video.

At the same time, video transcripts are the plain text versions of spoken video content provided in a document format.

This indicates a notable discrepancy between closed captioning and transcription for video content.

Anticipating that you have now understood the difference between closed captioning and transcription.

It's also beneficial to know how these two video processes are executed.

How Does Video Captioning and Transcription Take Place?

i) Using Deep Learning AI Methods

Deep learning is an AI-powered video captioning and transcription tool. It's an approach suitable for complex video content.

Complex video content is any video content that entails multiple clips, footage, images, objects, storytelling, and various speakers.

As it can be difficult to recognize all these features. Video captioning and transcription using the deep learning method suits these videos best.

The tool automatically generates meaningful texts that describe the events in the video.

The AI tool contains data algorithms that relate well with the visual domains in the video. It captions and transcribes based on the video content.

Some examples of these AI video tools include Otter.ai, ASR, Captions AI, Kapwing, and many others.

ii) Human Captioning or Transcribing Video Content

Human captioning or transcription involves manually creating captions or manually transcribing video content.

You can caption the video content into texts manually by typing out the spoken words. While potentially adding timestamps to mark the specific video section.

You can do this by playing the video and humanly typing a text into each line of dialogue.

But to ensure this is well done, you need to use a built-in captioning tool to align the typed text with the video content.

You can find such tools on online video platforms or video editing software.

For example, YouTube lovers can find this inbuilt video captioning tool in YouTube Studio.

Go to the subtitles tab, then add the language for your captions and proceed to type your captions manually. Once this is done, review and then publish your subtitles.

If this is how manual captioning of a video typically takes place? How can you transcribe your video manually?

Oh! It's very simple. You only need to play the video as you listen and type out the spoken words into a document.

Simply use text documents, such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word, to facilitate your typing work.

However, at the end, review your document as you correct the typing errors. Ensure you make the necessary edits and refine your document.   

What’s the Difference Between Video Captioning and Transcription?

Closed captions show one or two lines of text for each dialogue in a video.

Contrary to this, video transcripts often include multiple lines of text for the video conversations.

Captions tend to summarize what is said, but video transcripts include every uttered detail.

Closed captions run as the video is watched, but video transcripts cannot be synchronized in the video. Rather, the documents are separately accessed.

Therefore, making the captioned content to easily accommodate the deaf and persons with hard-of-hearing unlike the video transcripts.

Moreover, closed captioning for a video occurs through short text, while video transcripts arise in the form of long texts.

Video transcripts are often more detailed than captions. The goal of captions is only to provide a summary of the video talks.

But why caption or transcribe your video content?

Both closed captioning and transcription for any video can be beneficial. It can enhance user experience while improving the reputation of your video content.

Both methods make the content more accessible and exclusive to the targeted audiences.

But which of the two methods is more advisable to allow your video content garner more viewers and accomplish your goal?

Closed Captioning Versus Transcription: Which is Best for Video Content?

The effectiveness of closed captions for video content is significantly better than that of video transcripts.

More video growth occurs, especially in captioning rather than transcription. Instead of transcribing thousands of your video footage, consider the views of the majority.

Many opted for the closed captioning video technique, as opposed to the video transcripts. Why is this so?

Closed captioning for videos has more benefits than video transcripts. Some of these closed captioning video merits include:

With subtitles running as one watches the video, the content becomes more accessible and inclusive for people with hearing disabilities

Captions make the video content more appealing, making the viewers more engaged and interested in the content

Captions make the viewers easily understand the content, especially those who are not conversant with the video language

Text in captions can be easily indexed, making the video content rank higher in the search engines

Captioned content can be turned on and off, offering the viewers more flexibility during their video viewing

Conclusion

Video transcription and closed captioning provide an opportunity to diversify your video content towards a more exclusive viewerage space.

These two methods are now the major video advancement tools in the online market. Adapting these two practices can increase the visibility of your video content.

Even though there are challenges and the two methods differ, you won’t miss the likelihood of your video content being discovered by many people.

Why is it so? It’s because if your viewers miss something, they can go back and forth with the captions or transcribed text and link the previous video concepts.

So, if you are looking for video-closed captioning or transcription services, look no further but at Verbalscripts transcriptional services.

Verbalscripts releases video transcripts and captions with more accurate results.

Moreover, the company accommodates all videos, either in the same language or different languages, to support you and your endeavors. 

Verbalscripts advocates that video captions and transcripts are worth the video's attention. So, with Verbalscripts, you can derive great potential with your video content that can suit all your needs.