Adding Closed Captions to a YouTube Video
- Sign into your YouTube account and navigate to https://studio.youtube.com
- Once on YouTube Studio, click the ‘Subtitles’ option from the menu on the left-hand side. Subtitles is the word YouTube uses to describe any on-screen text – whether it be closed captioned or not.
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On the next page you will see a list of all the videos you have on your YouTube account. Find the one you want to add your closed captions to and click on the title.
- On the next page, you will see a list of languages attributed to that video. This will be auto detected from the title and description of your video and is likely to be English. If you have multiple languages displayed on this list, use the one that has ‘video language’ in parentheses. Click on the ‘ADD’ button under ‘Subtitles’.
- A pop-up window will appear presenting several options. Click the ‘Upload File’ option.
- Select ‘With timing’ on the next screen.
- You’ll then be asked to select the file you want to upload. Pick the relevant file and continue.
- You will be taken back to the window shown in step 5. This time, you’ll see a selection of boxes with words in them (which is what will be shown on screen) and, to the right of them, the timing those words should appear. You can use the play button to preview your video with the closed captioning to make sure it matches the timing. Click ‘Publish’ when you are ready and the closed captioning will be added to the video.
- You will now see the word ‘Published’ next to the language you selected in step 4, along with a three-dot symbol.
- Clicking on the three-dot symbol will allow you to delete the closed captions if you made a mistake or want to change them.
