How to add captions to YouTube videos: A Step by Step Guide

Imagine a scenario where your potential viewers on YouTube are trying to watch your video but in a noisy environment without headphones. They might not hear the audio clearly and may eventually stop watching your content. This makes you lose out on crucial moments where you can build your loyal audience. In such instances, knowing how to add captions to YouTube videos can immensely help you retain your potential fans. It can also help viewers with learning disabilities or those who speak a different native language. Let’s dive deeper into why you should add captions to your videos on YouTube and a few actionable steps to do the same.

Why you must essentially add captions to your YouTube videos?

Adding captions to your YT videos can significantly increase the viewer-to-subscriber conversion. Here are a few prominent benefits of adding captions to your YouTube videos.

Enhances Viewer Experience

You never know under what conditions your potential viewers will watch your video. Adding captions beforehand helps to address common hearing barriers, like unclear audio, different accents, unnecessary noise, etc., thus enhancing the video viewing experience for your fans.

Potentially Increases Engagement

Enhanced viewer experience often attracts higher engagement in your videos. Adding captions helps people understand what you’re trying to say, and they are likely to stay longer on your videos, engage with different aspects, and even share your content. As per an industry survey by Versison and Pulics Media, 80% of respondents added that they are more likely to watch the entire video if the captions are available.

Adding Captions makes your videos Accessible

When growing a YouTube channel, you cannot rely only on one target audience that speaks your native language. The world’s second-largest search engine gives you the opportunity to reach massive potential viewers in various geographical locations. Videos with captions added can help reach people who watch videos without sound or face hearing issues.

Improves YouTube SEO

YouTube crawlers cannot watch your videos, but they can crawl text-based elements like engaging titles and descriptions to know more details about your video. Adding closed captions to your YouTube videos provides the search engine with a written version of your video’s context, which helps rank them better in search results.

Open Vs Closed Captions: Which is the ideal choice for your videos?

Now that you know why you must add captions to your videos on YouTube, let’s uncover the key differences between the two types of YouTube captions and which one you should choose based on your needs.

Open Captions:

These captions are permanently embedded in your YouTube video and are always visible to the viewer regardless of what platform they view your video on. However, YouTube crawlers won’t be able to read them because they are not uploaded as a separate SRT file. You can go for the open captions when you simply want to upload your video without stressing much on creating a separate captions file for the search engine to read.

Closed Captions:

Closed Captions are significantly better than open captions since they are added as separate files that the search engine can read and crawl. Besides, closed captions have features, like multilingual settings, and can be customized to suit your viewers’ needs. However, which one should you choose?

Here’s a clever solution. I suggest you use open captions for visibility and style since they are always visible. Also, add closed captions in parallel for better SEO and higher ranking.

How To Add Captions to YouTube Videos? Simple Steps

Let’s go in-depth with the specific steps you must know about how to add captions to your YouTube videos. These steps can vary based on whether you are adding captions to a new video or an already uploaded video.

Steps to Add Captions when uploading a New YT Video

1. Login to your YouTube Studio.
2. Click on ‘Create’ option and click on ‘Upload videos’ in top right.
3. Drag and drop your video file to upload.
4. Enter the details as required and click on ‘Next.’
5. Under the video elements tab, click on ‘Add Subtitles’.
6. Now, you can click ‘Upload file’ to add captions to the YT video.

Don’t worry if you are confused about the last step to upload a captions file to YouTube. I have covered that in detail below.

Steps to Add Captions for existing YouTube Videos

1. Login to your YouTube Studio Dashboard.
2. Select ‘Subtitles’ menu in the left menu.
3. Select the video that you want to add captions to.
4. Click on ‘Add language’.
5. Select the option to ‘Add Language’.
6. Go to the ‘Subtitles’ column and click on the pencil icon that appears.
7. Click on ‘Upload file’ to add the captions file.

How to Upload a Captions file to YouTube?

A caption file consists of the text and timestamp for when the respective texts should be displayed. The most common type of captions file is the SRT type.

The following formats are compatible with YouTube, you can upload any of these caption files to your YouTube studio dashboard:

• SRT (.srt)
• SBV (.sbv or .sub)
• WebVTT (.vtt)
• TTML ( .ttml)
• DFXP (.dfxp)
• SCC (.scc)
• EBU-STL (.stl)
• Videotron Lambda (.cap)
• Cheetah (.cap or .asc)

Here’s how you can add captions to your new YT video or an existing one.

1. Upload a new video or hover to an existing video to which you want to add captions, using the methods above.
2. After clicking on ‘Upload file’, select ‘With Timing’ and ‘Continue.’
3. Select the SRT file from your computer or laptop’s local file browser.
4. Review the captions and their timings. Click on ‘Done’ if everything seems right.

How to Add Captions using Auto Sync

YouTube’s auto-sync feature is ideal if you already have a transcript of your video narration. However, this method to add captions will only work if your transcript and narration are in the same language. Also, I won’t recommend this step for creators who create longer videos with low-quality audio.

1. Upload a new video or navigate to the subtitles option of an existing video, following the steps suggested above.
2. Select ‘Auto Sync’
3. Copy and paste the transcript text into the text field visible. Review the captions for accuracy.
4. If everything looks good to go, you can select ‘Done’. It may take some time for the platform to auto sync the text to video. The video is automatically published once the captions are ready.

Typing Manually to Add Captions to YT Videos

This option is beneficial if you don’t have the video transcript. YouTube’s built-in options make the manual typing task easier. Here’s how to use this option.

1. Follow the steps as stated above to upload a new video or add captions to an existing one.
2. During the ‘Upload file’ option, select ‘Type Manually.’
3. Go to the text editor, and select ‘Pause while typing checkbox’ beneath the video player.
4. Play the video with its speed adjusted according to your convenience.
5. Start manually typing the captions.

Should You Use Automatic Captioning by YouTube?

Although YT provides an automatic captioning option, it is better to add human edited captions since automatically generated captions can have errors due to different reasons. The reasons could be different dialects, mispronunciation, or different accents. These minor issues can make the captions inaccessible while viewing the video and spoil the experience for your potential viewers. So, if you are using them, be sure to review them thoroughly.