Over 80 percent of U.S. consumers report that they watch videos with the sound off. If your video agency or marketing agency isn’t including closed-captions or transcriptions as part of your video editing process – you’re missing out.

As a video editor, your job makes your clients’ lives easier. You give them confidence knowing that if they need to record a couple takes, your savvy video editing skills will enable the creation of a seamless piece. They rely on you to not only produce a quality video but also to point them in the right direction when it comes to best practices in video production.

How Closed-Captions Increases the Value of Your Post-Production Deliverables

Offering closed-captions as part of your post-production packages is beneficial to your clients and enables you to add post-production value. It’s an add-on service that can help you increase your bottom-line while helping your clients by:

Keep reading to explore why you should be captioning your video content and how Rev can help.

5 Reasons to Add Closed-captions or Transcriptions to Your Video Editing Services List

As noted above, more people are viewing muted videos than those watching with the sound on. Since lipreading is a difficult technique to master, you’ll want to address that fact in your videos. Let’s take a closer look at the five ways that closed-captioning adds value to your post-production video deliverables.

1. Accelerate the Video Editing Process

When a raw file requires more than the standard clipping of the intro, outro, and leveling of sound, it’s helpful to have timestamps to guide your edits. Scanning a transcript for spoken words your customer wants you to remove is a lot easier than scrubbing through an entire video searching for the sound bite.

Using the transcription, you can create a rough draft on paper before digging into the video editing. Making a rough draft is a useful practice to eliminate the need to send your client multiple versions. You can agree on the editing before even opening your video editor.

2. Increase the Accessibility of the Media Content

Incorporating closed-captions into videos allows the creator to reach more people that are hearing impaired. Adding closed-captions makes it accessible to those that are deaf or hard of hearing and helps to remain in compliance with ADA regulations.

Transcribing a video can increase view time. Eighty percent of consumers are more likely to view a complete video if it has captions. It also allows people who are in a public place or trying not to disturb others with the opportunity to understand what the video is about.

3. Avoid “No Captions Available” or Auto-Captions

Distributing video content without captions is inconsiderate to those with disabilities, and unwise taking into account how people watch videos today. By delivering captions with your client’s next commercial, feature film, or online clip, you’re taking an extra task off of their plate.

Preparing captions helps them avoid the embarrassment of not having them ready for distribution. It’s unprofessional and frustrating to the hard of hearing community when the “no captions available” message pops up on the screen.

Yes, auto-captions can help, but often they are inaccurate, out of sync, and include misspelled names. While Facebook and YouTube are offering their own automatic captioning features, they usually require a lot of editing.

Captions can be added directly to the video or sent in a separate file. YouTube and Facebook allow you to upload your own .srt file, which is a lot less time consuming than editing captions within the platforms. Taking the extra step to include captions and make the content accessible is the best option.

4. Increase Marketing ROI

Reusing content to create new material in other formats is a common practice in the world of content marketing. It’s a lot easier than constantly churning out new ideas. When purchasing captions from Rev, you can also download the complete transcription. Your clients, or your team, will greatly appreciate the ability to create blog posts or white papers by quickly pulling information from the transcript.

Don’t forget about text alternatives for your non-text content like videos or audio files. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) thought leaders Moz and SEMRush both recommend incorporating transcripts on web pages that have video. It’s advantageous for your search rankings and increasing traffic, as well as opening the door for more engagement.

You can also use text to catch peoples’ attention when they’re scrolling on social media. Burn-in or open captions are always visible on a video. As a video editor, you can make certain words stand out by increasing the size or changing the font. With the caption file on hand, it’s easy to add this extra design aspect to your videos for social media marketing.  

5. Boost the Distribution Strategy

A video agency that sends off their final deliverables with subtitles and closed-captions sets their clients up for success. Marketing agencies with international clients can also include foreign language subtitles as another way to expand the audience reach.

The client can immediately upload or submit their films, episodes, or videos for distribution without the need to acquire captions from another vendor. By speeding up the ability to share their newest project with the world, you accelerate their time to gratification. It won’t be long before they start to see engagements, rising view counts, and other actions.

It’s Time to Start Captioning Your Videos

Captions are a must whether the client is focused on marketing ROI or making their content more accessible to an audience they weren’t reaching before. Add captions to your video agency, marketing agency, or freelance editing packages to increase the value of your services.

More than 100,000 companies trust rev. Our services are convenient, quick, and affordable for generating transcriptions, captions, or subtitles. Contact us if you have any questions or would like to learn more.

Talk With A Captioning Expert