Communicating ideas to people across the world has never been more accessible. However, our increased level of connectedness also involves new challenges and responsibilities. More than ever, we need to consider how to express ideas in such a way as to facilitate inclusion, tolerance. We also need to consider the best the most efficient way to reach all the people that might be interested in our content.
Captioning and subtitling videos allows creators to open up their work to a larger audience, and permits those who need those transcripts to better interact with the content.
Today we will be looking at the best-closed caption and subtitle apps that you can use for your videos. We will look at what they offer, what challenges they have, and which is going to make the task of captioning your videos the easiest.
What should a successful caption or subtitle app be able to do?
Before we dive right into this, we should talk about what closed captions are and what they are used for. Closed captions are the transcribed version of the text that is being spoken in a video. As opposed to open captions, these can be turned on and off. They do not linger in view when not needed.
Closed captioning was created as a tool to aid those who are hearing impaired. Yet, they are used in a much larger array of situations. People find that using closed captions can help them learn a foreign language, serves them to follow a video while traveling, or in a noisy environment. Or, perhaps, it simply helps them better concentrate on the subject being discussed in the video.
Caption and subtitle apps look to provide assistance in creating and integrating the text version of the spoken parts. These services are relatively new and forced to adapt to a dynamic market of video content. In order for this software to be truly successful, it needs to meet certain criteria.
First of all, it goes without saying, that the text needs to be accurate. Some apps are better at this than others. For now, the services where professionals are tasked with handling the transcript, have a higher degree of accuracy over AI-generated text.
Then there is the matter of delivering the content quickly and in a way where it can be easily integrated into the videos. Another factor is that of pricing. It is usually advisable to work with an app that charges a fee, albeit small, as a guarantee that the work will be handled by professionals. Expertise in other languages and the style of the captions could also play a part in your decision. The ideal service should include all of these elements and should be easy and intuitive to use.
With that being said, let’s look at some of the best available options for captioning your videos.
Rev Captioning
In terms of services that provide transcriptions, captions, or subtitles for videos, Rev is one of the most complete options available on the market. And while this is not an app per se, Rev can be used on a mobile phone browser by visiting the website.
Similar to the previously described apps, efficiency was on the mind of the founders of Rev. Users can simply choose to visit the captions page for English captions or the subtitles page for other languages. You can simply upload your video file, post a video URL, or use one of our many captioning integrations like our YouTube or Vimeo integrations. Rev’s human captioners & subtitlers do the rest, providing 99% accurate and swiftly delivered captions.
The website is easy to navigate. That’s why users can seamlessly switch from desktop to phone use by accessing Rev.com in their browser. Furthermore, unlike the previously mentioned apps, Rev provides a lot more options. For example, you get to choose between the open and closed captions files. Open captions are added straight to your video, and closed captions generate caption files like SRT’s and VTT’s.
Rev now offers open captions. Just check the “burned-in captions” box at checkout and you’ll receive a video with permanent, hard-coded captions added straight to your videos. Also available for foreign language subtitles!
Rev is a service that is designed to be versatile, to connect video creators across various forms of media, and to keep up with the latest trends. That is why Rev also proposes a captions service for Zoom using terrific speech recognition AI. This can help video creators and viewers better enjoy meetings and web seminars that utilize the Zoom software.
MixCaptions
MixCaptions is a popular app that aims to help make videos accessible to users who may, regularly, be watching a movie on the mute setting or may need the transcription for an increased level of understanding.
It was developed by Mixcord Inc. It is exclusively available to users of iOS and can be downloaded from the App Store. From the very beginning, the app was produced to assist those using social media services, especially. For example, Mixcord promises to increase Instagram and Facebook viewership by offering the option to add captions to videos. It also promises to boost view time by helping to add subtitles. It currently supports 12 languages.
MixCaptions offers both a free app and a purchase option. It functions by letting users upload a video to which for which the software generates captions. It promises to be simple to use. And, indeed, once the captions are created, users can easily access the option to edit them. Users can even import an SRT file containing the captions. A wide set of customization options, such as the option to change fonts colors and text, are included.
One of the drawbacks of MixCaptions, however, is that it allows for a pre-recorded video of only up to 30 minutes to be captioned. Also, the app is primarily geared towards social media use and advertised as a tool to increase engagement on those apps. Some users also reported and complained about having to pay both for the app itself as well as the minutes of audio they wanted to be transcribed.
MixCaptions also only supports machine-generated captions, which are less accurate than a human transcription option.
“Add Subtitles” App
The straightforwardly titled Add Subtitles app is another popular option, albeit, again one that is exclusively tailored to iOS users. Similar to MixCaptions it promises its users convenience above everything else.
The app works by using speech-recognition technology. Once the words being spoken in the video are recognized by the software, it can begin transcribing them to the video. The transcription is done automatically and added to the appropriate timestamps. It also includes an option to download subtitles in over 32 languages.
Add Subtitles app users are not limited by the number of minutes of the pre-recorded video. They are, however, encouraged to purchase one of the options giving them more control over the captions. For example, they will need to purchase for the watermarks to be removed, for a business account, or for a translation of the text.
Other caption and subtitle apps
There are other captioning alternatives available. Many of these include some great features, but also tend to lack, for the time being, in one or more of the areas that we previously described.
Subtitles Viewer is another app exclusive to iOS. It is geared towards providing subtitles in various languages and it is usually used for movies or television productions.
Veme.ly is an app that lets users add their own subtitles to videos. The service is mostly tailored to social media use. However, it does not include either AI speech to text software or the assistance of industry professionals.
Autocap will provide automatically generated video captions. The default setting of the app highlighted one of the words being transcribed. Users can manually edit this and change the accentuated word.
Conclusion
Creating subtitles and captions for videos is becoming something of an industry standard. It provides immense opportunities. It allows the video creator to comfortably share their message with the world. It also provides assistance to those who require it in order to interact with the information.
There are several apps that offer this kind of service. While most of them include good features, make sure that you use the available information to choose the one option that is the most reliable and easy to use.
