How to add closed captioning to Facebook! (subtitles)

Option 1: Download the captions from YouTube

So if you have the file video uploaded to YouTube captions will be automatically generated. These can be edited if needed. To download the SRT file from YouTube follow this handy guide:

How to Get Captions in Facebook Video [SRT File Hack]

Ryan Stewart [WEBRIS]

 

 

 

The STR can then be used for Facebook.

 

See How to rename the file for Facebook.

 

If you don’t have access to the YouTube account you can still download the captions using software like this:

 

https://www.4kdownload.com/download

 

 

 

 

 

Option 2: Microsoft Video Indexer

Video indexer builds upon media AI technologies to make it easier to extract insights from videos. Power new forms of content discovery such as searching for spoken words, faces, characters, and emotions. Enrich your apps with embedded video insights to drive user engagement.

 

From <https://vi.microsoft.com/en-us/>

 

 

https://www.videoindexer.ai/

 

Video Indexer allows you to upload a file – and later download a VTT file. (as well as gaining other insights and transcript)

 

 

The VTT file can be converted to SRT via this website: https://subtitletools.com/convert-to-srt-online/

 

The STR can then be used for Facebook.

 

See How to rename the file for Facebook.

 

(This method was suggested by Chris Walden v-chwald@microsoft.com)

 

 

Option 3: Create closed captions from scratch.

Alternately you can make captions in notepad! I’m thinking about making a handy tool in Python that would make adding subtitles easier, but that’s for another day. 😊

 

The CAPTION.en_US.srt – file looks like this:

 

1

00:00:00,020 –> 00:00:06,629

oh hi guys how are you a little while

 

2

00:00:04,950 –> 00:00:09,450

ago I can’t what it might be quite fun

 

3

00:00:06,629 –> 00:00:12,750

to build a little Python program that

 

4

00:00:09,450 –> 00:00:14,910

would actually make song lyrics and I

 

5

00:00:12,750 –> 00:00:16,590

kind of thought well songs seem really

 

You can download this example file here

 

The STR can then be used for Facebook.

 

See How to rename the file for Facebook.

 

 

How to rename the file for Facebook.

01 August 2018

12:27

Closed captioning on Facebook requires an SRT file. (called Name.en_US.srt).

 

Note: You must include the country code in the name. (GB and US for English)

 

Note: You may also have to upload the same .srt file in English and American English: Name.en_GB.srt

 

GB is British closed captioning. You may need to change some words to the correct spelling; for example ‘Color’ to ‘Colour’.

 

 

This can be done by editing the .str file in notepad.

 

 

 

To do this right click on the .srt, select ‘Open With…’ then select Notepad.

 

 

 

This file can then be renamed and uploaded to Facebook by changing the name from: Name.srt –>> Name.en_US.srt

 

(You may need to change folder options if you can’t see the file extension.)

 

All country codes are here:

 

  • af_ZA (Afrikaans)
  • ar_AR (Arabic)
  • ay_BO (Aymara)
  • az_AZ (Azerbaijani)
  • be_BY (Belarusian)
  • bg_BG (Bulgarian)
  • bn_IN (Bengali)
  • bs_BA (Bosnian)
  • ca_ES (Catalan)
  • ck_US (Cherokee)
  • cs_CZ (Czech)
  • cx_PH (Cebuano)
  • cy_GB (Welsh)
  • da_DK (Danish)
  • de_DE (German)
  • el_GR (Greek)
  • en_GB (English – UK)
  • en_IN (English – India)
  • en_US (English – US)
  • eo_EO (Esperanto)
  • es_CL (Spanish – Chile)
  • es_CO (Spanish – Colombia)
  • es_ES (Spanish – Spain)
  • es_LA (Spanish)
  • es_MX (Spanish – Mexico)
  • es_VE (Spanish – Venezuela)
  • et_EE (Estonian)
  • eu_ES (Basque)
  • fa_IR (Persian)
  • fi_FI (Finnish)
  • fo_FO (Faroese)
  • fr_CA (French – Canada)
  • fr_FR (French – France)
  • fy_NL (Frisian)
  • ga_IE (Irish)
  • gl_ES (Galician)
  • gn_PY (Guarani)
  • gu_IN (Gujarati)
  • gx_GR (Classical Greek)
  • he_IL (Hebrew)
  • hi_IN (Hindi)
  • hr_HR (Croatian)
  • hu_HU (Hungarian)
  • hy_AM (Armenian)
  • id_ID (Indonesian)
  • is_IS (Icelandic)
  • it_IT (Italian)
  • ja_JP (Japanese)
  • jv_ID (Javanese)
  • ka_GE (Georgian)
  • kk_KZ (Kazakh)
  • km_KH (Khmer)
  • kn_IN (Kannada)
  • ko_KR (Korean)
  • ku_TR (Kurdish)
  • la_VA (Latin)
  • li_NL (Limburgish)
  • lt_LT (Lithuanian)
  • lv_LV (Latvian)
  • mg_MG (Malagasy)
  • mk_MK (Macedonian)
  • ml_IN (Malayalam)
  • mn_MN (Mongolian)
  • mr_IN (Marathi)
  • ms_MY (Malay)
  • mt_MT (Maltese)
  • nb_NO (Norwegian – Bokmal)
  • ne_NP (Nepali)
  • nl_BE (Dutch – Belgium)
  • nl_NL (Dutch)
  • nn_NO (Norwegian – Nynorsk)
  • pa_IN (Punjabi)
  • pl_PL (Polish)
  • ps_AF (Pashto)
  • pt_BR (Portuguese – Brazil)
  • pt_PT (Portuguese – Portugal)
  • qu_PE (Quechua)
  • rm_CH (Romansh)
  • ro_RO (Romanian)
  • ru_RU (Russian)
  • sa_IN (Sanskrit)
  • se_NO (Northern Sami)
  • sk_SK (Slovak)
  • sl_SI (Slovenian)
  • so_SO (Somali)
  • sq_AL (Albanian)
  • sr_RS (Serbian)
  • sv_SE (Swedish)
  • sw_KE (Swahili)
  • sy_SY (Syriac)
  • ta_IN (Tamil)
  • te_IN (Telugu)
  • tg_TJ (Tajik)
  • th_TH (Thai)
  • tl_PH (Filipino)
  • tr_TR (Turkish)
  • tt_RU (Tatar)
  • uk_UA (Ukrainian)
  • ur_PK (Urdu)
  • uz_UZ (Uzbek)
  • vi_VN (Vietnamese)
  • xh_ZA (Xhosa)
  • yi_DE (Yiddish)
  • zh_CN (Simplified Chinese – China)
  • zh_HK (Traditional Chinese – Hong Kong)
  • zh_TW (Traditional Chinese – Taiwan)
  • zu_ZA (Zulu)

 

From <https://www.facebook.com/help/www/1528795707381162>

 

 

 

 

How to add closed captioning to Facebook! (subtitles)

  

To add close captioning to a Facebook video follow this handy guide: http://tubularinsights.com/how-to-add-closed-captions-facebook-videos/

 

In a nutshell:

 

 

Remember to use the correct naming convention:

 

Name.en_GB.srt

 

Name.en_US.srt

 

It’s probably worth uploading this file twice with both names.

 

 

Twitter Captions (burn method)

Copied from here: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/364372-How-to-easily-burn-in-hardcode-srt-subtitles-to-mp4-mkv-with-VidCoder

 

I have confirmed this method works.

 

Software

VidCoder 1.5.26 beta or later

VidCoder 1.5.26 portable version beta or later

 

 

Guide

Install VidCoder

Open your video files under Choose a video source: Video file.

Under Subtitles choose Edit:

Import .srt file.

Click on Burn In.

Select the Output folder.

Select Preset, like iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone 8 etc.

Encode!

Wait

Done!

More settings

Click on the Encoding: Settings button to adjust video resolution/frame size, output file size, etc

Example how to set the output file size to 20MB. (Smaller file size = lower quality…)

 

 

 

Problems

You can’t adjust the font settings. But you can use Subtitle Edit to change the colour in your srt subtitle, In Subtitle Edit open the srt, Mark all (Ctrl+A). Right-click and select Color. Save as a new srt. Import in Vidcoder.

 

You could also make .ass subtitles with custom font styles. But you must mux them with your video first:

In subtitle edit, open srt, under Format choose: Advanced Sub Station Alpha, select all(CTRL-A) lines, right click and choose Advanced Sub Station Alpha styles. Edit the font, color, background(Select the Opaque box under Border). Save as new .ass.

Last get Mkvtoolnixgui, add your video file, add the .ass, start muxing a new mkv. Open the mkv in VidCoder. Click on Subtitles Edit and it should list the subtitle directly. Click burn In.

 

From <https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/364372-How-to-easily-burn-in-hardcode-srt-subtitles-to-mp4-mkv-with-VidCoder>

 

 

Twitter (and closing notes)

Unfortunately, as of August 2018 Twitter isn’t keeping up with closed captioning, so captions need to be burned into the video.

There is also a 2:20 time limit for twitter videos.

Hope this is helpful, and feel free to share this around.

David W. Beck.

www.dwbeck.com

example of twitter video

(*These captions are on the video itself, so can’t be turned off.)

YouTube and Facebook captions are displayed independently of the video.