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Adding Captions to Your Recorded Lectures

Camtasia Studio's open captioning feature allows educators to synchronize voice narration with text displayed onscreen to create videos that are accessible to a broad audience. For example, captions can be used to create videos that are accessible to hearing impaired students or colleagues, or to add subtitles for ESL students or others who do not speak English.

Watch an example video with captions >

Before adding captions in Camtasia Studio, we recommend creating a prepared script in Microsoft Word. This allows you to save your caption text for future use and also to check for spelling and grammar errors before pasting it into the scripting text box.

To Add Open Captioning to your Video

NOTE: In order to add Open Captions to your Timeline, you must first have a project opened within Camtasia Studio with clips on the Timeline.

1. Click the Captions link in the Task List.
2. The Camtasia Studio Tip screen appears. This tip screen gives instructions for how to create Automatic Open Captions. Once you have read the tip screen, click Close.
3. To enable the Paste button, you must first copy the desired caption text to the clipboard.
4. In the Open Captions task page, click the Paste button to paste your script into the scripting text box. This creates your first Caption Point. The caption text is placed on the video within the Preview Area.
   NOTE: In the scripting text box, after three lines of text, the text turns from black to red. The text turns red to remind you that anything over three lines will not be included in the current caption.
5. Click the Start button to begin setting Caption Points that syncs your script with the audio. The video begins to play back from the beginning of the Timeline.
6. To set a new Caption Point, click on any of the words within the scripting text box.
   TIP: An easy way to determine where to set the Caption Points is to move your mouse over the first red word. Listen to the audio—when the screen video in the Preview Area reaches that word—click on the word with your left mouse button.
7. A Caption Point is set at the exact location. As a result, three lines of text turn from red to black. The rest of the text is updated in red to indicate where the new caption should begin.
8. As you create your captions, the Preview Area and the Timeline are continually updated. Continue to set Caption Points until all of your text has been used.
9. Click the Stop button to end the captioning process.
10. Click the Finished link to exit the Open Captions task page.

Watch the video tutorial >

About the Open Caption Onscreen Display

With open captioning, the caption text becomes a permanent part of the video and cannot be turned on or off by the viewer. However, the Overlay option allows you to display the caption text on top of the video when enabled and display the caption underneath the video when the Overlay option is disabled.

The last caption entered displays on the video until a new caption is entered. If you would like to have sections of your video that do not show a caption, you must insert a blank caption.

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