Introduction
This page details the process of producing DAMS-ready captions for a video using the UT Automated Transcription Service and the Amara subtitle editing platform. The Automated Transcription Service uses Amazon Transcribe to attempt a timestamped transcript of a given video, and can output a number of file formats. With Amara, users can edit subtitles directly over the video, to ensure the audio and subtitles are properly synchronized, and that the subtitles are formatted correctly.
The Automated Transcription Service often produces inconsistent results, especially for videos with poor audio quality, Spanish language content, or content with multiple speakers. The automated transcript output by the service will always need to be reviewed and edited, but it may sometimes be faster to create subtitles from scratch in Amara, without loading in the automated output. However, Amara does not support video upload, only linking. This means that even if a user does not want to use the output from the Automated Transcription Service, they should still use it to host any video to be edited in Amara.
1) Use the Automated Transcription Service to generate a preliminary transcript
Log in and upload audio/video file here: https://utdirect.utexas.edu/apps/captioning/services/my_jobs/
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Each user account has a limit of 50 transcription jobs. Contact Daniel Jacobs to reset this limit when you run out of transcriptions. |
2) Ingest the media file and transcript into Amara
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Amara is a web-based tool to create and edit captions. Most features can be used with a free account, but for free accounts, captions projects will be visible to the public. UT Libraries' Captioning and Transcription Services maintain a subscription for a UT workspace in Amara, that cannot be viewed by the public. A limited number of licenses/seats are available for creating captions for DAMS assets in the UT workspace. A seat can be made available for the duration of a captioning project. Contact Daniel Jacobs for details. |
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On the video project page, click the three dots to the right of "Add/Edit subtitles" and select "Upload subtitles". Upload the VTT file downloaded from the automated captioning tool, or from another source.. Select the language of the subtitles and click Upload.
3) Edit the captions in Amara
Click "Add/Edit subtitles", and in the window that opens click "Edit English" (or whichever language your captions are) to open the caption editor.
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- A single line of captions shouldn't exceed 42 characters. Break longer lines of captions into a second line.
- Captions shouldn't exceed three lines at a time. Split longer caption sections into multiple sections.
- The reading rate shouldn't exceed 21 characters per second. Increase the duration of the caption to give it more time on screen, or shorten the text to make it easier to read.
Amara editor keyboard shortcuts
Amara has the following keyboard shortcuts intended to make the editing process faster and easier.
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To save your progress and close the editor, click "Save Draft" in the top right of the window. If you are finished with the subtitles altogether, click "Publish"
4) Download captions
Back in the main Amara page for the video, click the "download" button on the right side of the screen to download a VTT file of the captions you have created.
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