Choosing a Captioning Company

The captioning company that you use to create captions for your videos will depend on the types of videos that you use in your courses.  See specific instructions below based on the type of videos that you use.

Panopto

If you use DELTA’s Panopto service, the IT Accessibility Office will help you coordinate your video captioning with the DELTA staff.  DELTA staff will need to know the folder in Panopto your videos will be stored in and which videos need captioning. By default Panopto automatically captions files that are stored on the Panopto servers, e.g. when they are put into your My Folder or a sub-folder. While these automated captions are sufficient for general reference, a service needs to be used that includes human error checking for fully accessible captions to be provided. The automated captioning feature must be disabled for the videos to be captioned by a third party provider.  

  1. If you create your own Panopto presentations by uploading video or recording from your desktop make sure the presentations you want to have captioned by the captioning service are uploaded to a folder other than your primary My Folder. Many Panopto tutorial videos are available on how to publish or move presentations within the service. 
  2. It is also relatively easy to edit captions in Panopto. Opening up the video editor and selecting the Captions item in the left menu, you can correct the text. This is a reasonable solution if the videos are relatively short, but can be time-consuming to verify for longer videos.

You can contact learntech@ncsu.edu for assistance with making your Panopto videos accessible.

YouTube

If you host videos that you have created on YouTube, you may use a number of different captioning companies.  If the total cost is over $5000, you can use one of the vendors on our Convenience Contract. If the total cost is less than $5000, you can use any provider you want, pursuant to University regulations, but you can also use those on the Convenience Contract.  If you use these companies, make sure to mention the convenience contract number with your order.

Rev.com is another popular option for captioning your videos hosted in YouTube because it is less expensive and syncs with your YouTube account.

Other Online Hosting Solutions

If you are using online hosting solution, other than Panopto or YouTube, first make sure the video player provided is keyboard accessible to students.  If so, follow the instructions for YouTube.

Online Videos that You Do Not Own

Captioning videos that you do not own can be more complicated.  It is best practice to first check to see if there is a version of the video that has captions on another platform or contact the company that owns the videos and ask them to provide captions.  Surprisingly, many companies will provide the captions if you request them for educational reasons.

If neither of these options work, you should use Automatic Sync’s Smart Player.  This allows for captioning of videos owned by other individuals for educational purposes and has a variety of other great features.

DVD or VHS

If your video is on an older DVD or VHS tape that does not include captions, you may use Automatic Sync or 3PlayMedia, which are both vendors on our Convenience Contract.  If you use these companies, make sure to mention the convenience contract number with your order.
You might also consider contacting the Digital Media Production team in the NC State Libraries for help digitizing your media before requesting captions.