- by Lon Naylor
Why it’s a Good Idea to Start Using Captions
When I taught Camtasia Studio live here in Atlanta last month I was a bit embarrassed when the students asked about adding captions. In spite of the fact that I’d use Camtasia for years I had no real experience adding them to my videos. I promised that if they would come to one of our weekly coaching sessions next week I would do a special demo on this feature.
Since researching the steps to do Captions correctly I now find myself looking for and loving the videos that use them. In addition to being extremely helpful for the hearing impaired Captions are great and here’s why
1. I am a reader. In most cases I would prefer to read than do just about anything else (except eat. I love eating.) Being able to read the captions on a video added a lot to my comprehension of the information. And in some cases, I preferred to turn off the audio and just read the captions. It was also helpful when I didn’t have my headset with me in a coffee shop and couldn’t even hear what was being said.
2. Having your audio transcribed by Camtasia to create captions also allows you to have the transcription done more quickly. Once you have a transcription you can put it on the page with your video for SEO. You can also upload the transcription to YouTube along with a video and paste it in the Description box. This makes it more likely that your video will appear when people are searching for your keywords.
3. Once you have Captions in place your video becomes “searchable” within itself. There is a box in the Camtasia Production Wizard that you can check that will allow people to type in any word or phrase and it will go to the exact point in the video where that word appears. This makes the video more useful to be used as a “help” file at the moment someone has a quick question about a feature in your software or process. I think that’s pretty cool.
Now that you know why Captions are useful give them a try. But whatch this video first to see how….
