Kaltura Captions

Kaltura Captions Guide

Kaltura will automatically caption your videos to help make them more accessible to all users. However, you will need to check the captions for accuracy. Furthermore, if your video is in another language, you will need to order captions in that language because, by default, Kaltura attempts to caption in English. However, Kaltura offers machine captioning in several languages, so you will not need to manually caption your videos, only check them for accuracy and edit as needed. After the caption file is available (it will take some time and will not be immediately available upon uploading a video), follow the necessary steps as outlined below.

Determine Caption Type and Needs

Those who are moving their files from Video 47 to Kaltura may have one of three types of captioning.

Burned in captions – This means your captions are a part of each frame of your video and cannot be turned on or off. If you upload a file with this type of caption, you will need to delete the automatically created caption file.
External caption file – This means that at some point, you or someone else may have created a caption file, likely a .vtt file. This file can be uploaded to your video on Kaltura; however, you will need to also delete the automatically created caption file if you choose this approach.
No captioning – If your video did not previously have captioning, English captioning will be automatically created and is editable for accuracy. If your video is in a language other than English, you will need to delete the automatic caption and request machine captioning in the language of your video.

Information on editing, deleting, and requesting captions based on your needs can all be found within this guide.

Edit Captions

Access a course site in Sakai in which you have enabled the Kaltura tools.
Click on Kaltura My Media in the left-side course menu.
Click on the video you want to work with.
Below the video on the right side, click the Actions drop-down menu and choose Caption & Enrich.
The caption information will be displayed below the Existing Requests heading and should show if it is complete.
Click the edit icon () next to the file information.
The captions will be listed on the left and the video on the right. You can play/pause the video and edit the corresponding captions.
If you make any changes, be sure to click the Save button in the upper-right corner and then click Yes to confirm the save.
Click the Back link in the upper-right corner to exit the caption editor and return to the video in My Media.

Order Captions in a Language Other than English

If your video is in another language, you will need to order captions in that language. We have several language packs available for machine-captioning, so you will only need to check and edit them afterward (see steps above on editing captions).

Access a course site in Sakai in which you have enabled the Kaltura tools.
Click on Kaltura My Media in the left-side course menu.
Click on the video you want to work with.
Below the video on the right side, click the Actions drop-down menu and choose Caption & Enrich.
The caption information will be displayed below the Existing Requests heading, showing if one or multiple are complete and in which language.
To order captions in another language, click the + Order button or scroll to the Order Captions & Enrichment Services section.
Click the Source Media Language drop-down menu and select the language of the video.
Click Submit to generate the captions.

The new captions will take some time to generate. You can check the status under Existing Requests. Once finished, the status will change from Pending to Completed. You may need to refresh your browser to see the update.

Upload a Caption File

If your video already has a caption file (often a file ending in .vtt), another option is to upload that to Kaltura for proper captioning.

Access a course site in Sakai in which you have enabled the Kaltura tools.
Click on Kaltura My Media in the left-side course menu.
Click on the edit icon () next to the video you want to work with.
Below the video, click on the Captions tab, which will display any captions already generated for the video.
Click on the Upload captions file button.
Click Browse… and select your captions file.
Choose the language and accuracy in the drop-down menus.
Add a label and click Save.
When the green Upload Completed! message appears, click Save again to exit.

The new captions should also appear in the captions list now.

Delete Unused Captions

Once the captions match the video’s language, you can delete any non-matching captions to eliminate confusion and meet accessibility standards.

Access a course site in Sakai in which you have enabled the Kaltura tools.
Click on Kaltura My Media in the left-side course menu.
Click on the edit icon () next to the video you want to work with.
Below the video, click on the Captions tab, which will display any captions already generated for the video.
Click on the delete icon () next to the captions you wish to remove.
Click Delete to confirm that you want to delete the file.

The extra caption file should now be removed from the list and will not appear as an option for viewers to select.