Audience: Media owners and co-editors in Kaltura (faculty and staff)
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 new regulatory and policy requirements. Before publishing a recording, auto-generated captions should be edited by a human to ensure accessibility for all users. Media owners and co-editors can edit the auto-generated captions, or consider the options in this article:
- Paying for Human-Edited Captions in Kaltura
- Working with System Campus Disability Resource Offices
- Additional Resources
Paying for Human-Edited Captions in Kaltura
Media owners and co-editors can pay to have their media in Kaltura captioned by human professionals. The cost is based on the language used in the recording, turnaround time requested, and the duration of the media being captioned (rounded up to the next minute). Pricing starts at $1.69 per minute for English with four day turnaround time. Refer to Kaltura: Human-Edited Caption Pricing for details.
Note: As of May 20, 2025, human-edited captions in English created by this process use a new, higher-quality vendor. OIT staff continue to explore additional vendors and tools for captioning. Contact [email protected] if you would like to share feedback about available options.
Prerequisite: Establish a Billing Relationship
Before requesting professional captions for media in Kaltura, submit a Kaltura Professional Captioning Billing Information Form and provide your Enterprise Financial System (EFS) billing information. Office of Information Technology (OIT) staff will verify the information and email you to confirm. After that, you will be able to request professional captioning using the steps below.
Request Human-Edited Captions
After establishing a billing relationship (see above prerequisite):
- 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
- From the My Media page, select the link to the recording that needs human-edited captions
- From the Actions menu, select Caption & Enrich
- Select + Order
- Under Order Captions & Enrichment Services
- For Service, select Human-Edited ($$)
- For Source Media Language, select the language of the recording
- For Turnaround Time, select the slowest (least expensive) method to meet your needs
- Select Submit
The request will be sent to University administrators. You will be notified by email from [email protected] when the request is approved or denied, and/or when the work is completed. Completed captions will be added to your media automatically. At the next billing cycle, the EFS Chartfield String you entered previously will be charged for the work.
Working With System Campus Disability Resource Offices
If you are an instructor who received a media captioning accommodation letter from a student, contact your system campus Disability Resource office for assistance:
- Crookston: [email protected]
- Duluth: [email protected]
- Morris: [email protected]
- Rochester: [email protected]
- Twin Cities: [email protected]
University staff are working to streamline workflows for accommodation requests. More details will be published here in the coming weeks.