Kaltura: Edit Closed Captions

At the University of Minnesota, media (video and audio) recordings uploaded to Kaltura in Canvas and Kaltura MediaSpace receive auto-generated captions, which do not meet regulatory and policy requirements. When a recording is published publicly or viewing is required for a course, auto-generated captions must be edited by a human to ensure accessibility for all users. Read more at the policy's frequently asked questions (FAQ) page.

Note: The auto-generated captioning process assumes spoken words are in English.Media owners and co-editors can re-run the automatic captioning process for other languages. For more information, go to Kaltura: Automatic Captions for Languages Other Than English.

Contents:

• Accessing the Closed Captions Editor
• Understanding Editor Features
• Editing Captions
• Additional Resources

Accessing the Closed Captions Editor

1. Go to My Media using one of these two options:
   • Log in to Canvas, then from the Account menu, select My Media (Kaltura).
   • Log in to MediaSpace.
2. Your personal My Media page appears. To the right of the video that needs caption editing, from the  Show Actions menu select Edit.
3. The Edit page appears. Select the Accessibility tab.
4. Under Available accessibility assets, to the right of the  label, from the  Actions menu select Launch Editor. The Closed Caption & EAD Editor opens in a new window.

Understanding Editor Features

The editor has several components. The left side contains the captions assigned to your video. The right side is a preview of your video with your captions visible underneath. 

• Captions dropdown menu: If there are multiple caption tracks, you can choose which one you wish to edit.
• Search: Find specific words or phrases within the selected caption track.
• Replace: Search for and replace words one-for-one with a new word. 
  1. Select Replace. The "Find match and Replace with" popup appears. 
  2. Type a word into the Find match field
  3. Enter a replacement word or phrase into the Replace with field.
  4. Select Replace.
• Add Speaker: Use to label a speaker for a given portion of your captions.
  1. Select the checkbox(es) located to the left of timestamps.
  2. Select Add speaker. The "Speaker name" popup appears.
  3. Type the speaker's name in the field.
  4. Select Add speaker.
• Player: Use the player to view the video.

Editing Captions

1. Find the block of text containing the caption you want to edit. If you haven't edited the captions at all, start at the beginning.
2. Select  Play under your video to start it. The captions are highlighted in light blue as they appear on the video.
3. In each block of text, watch the video clip to check for accuracy. For more detailed caption editing instructions, go to Video: Guidelines for Editing Auto-Generated Captions.
   1. As you edit, the video will stop.
   2. The editor will adjust the video to match the text.
   3. Check for correct punctuation and spelling and otherwise follow guidelines for editing auto-generated captions.
4. Edit the text blocks. Total characters per text block appear in the bottom-right corner.
   • Break the captions into two-line blocks of 64 characters or less (about 32 characters per line)
5. When you have finished editing, select Edit details.

The Edit caption details window appears.

1. Change the Accuracy % slider to 99%.
2. In the Label section, remove English - auto-generated and leave this section blank.
   • In the video, English will still be shown as an option because the Language is set to English.
3. Select Save when you are finished with this section.

6. Select Save when you are finished.
   1. A pop-up confirmation window appears. Select Save, or Cancel to return to editing.
7. Review your captions by viewing the video. 

Additional Resources

• Kaltura: Request Additional Captioning Services
• Kaltura: Automatic Captions for Languages Other Than English
• Kaltura: Auto-Generated Captions for Older Content
• Accessibility of Digital Content and Information Technology FAQ (policy.umn.edu)