[Athen] Guidelines for captioning video: don't forget recording quality

[Christine Robinson]

We don’t have a line item in our budget for captioning at this point, either. We’re still in fairly early stages of helping our faculty members create accessible instructional materials, and these days, we’re simply encouraging them to do as much of their own captioning as they can.

We use Kaltura for most video; some of our faculty upload their videos to YouTube. With either platform, there is automatic machine captioning. Of course, there are lots of speech-to-text “caption fails,” but at least our profs can use that captioning as a basis, and then make corrections where needed.

Correcting machine captioning can be very time-consuming, so we’re trying to help our faculty members learn how to create videos with higher audio quality. Better audio results in fewer errors in the machine captioning, which means it takes less time to correct.

Our recommendations:

1.       Script: Whenever possible, work from a script instead of speaking off the cuff.

2.       Microphone: Use the best mic possible (not the laptop’s mic), keep it close to the mouth, learn to adjust levels so the sound isn’t distorted.

3.       Enunciation: Take care to speak as clearly as possible.

Hope this helps a bit!

Best,
Chris

Christine Robinson | Technical Trainer/Writer | Center for Teaching Excellence
Georgia Gwinnett College | 1000 University Center Lane | Lawrenceville, GA 30043

From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Molly Griffith
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2017 3:31 PM
To: athen-list at mailman13.u.washington.edu
Subject: [Athen] Guidelines for captioning video

We are trying to get a feel for what guidelines are out there in terms of captioning videos for courses.

1. Does your institution have a budget for captioning?
2. If so, are there limits on how much video can be captioned per course?


Any information is appreciated!
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