Trying out Youtube’s auto-captioning.

I had to convert my MP3 output from Garageband, create a graphic and import that graphic and MP3 into iMovie so I can export to MP4.

Once that was done (takes around an hour, and my poor old MBP heating up the room), I upload to MP4 to my own Youtube account and used their Youtube studio to add captions.

🧐 Fun fact, my MBP kernel panicked 3 times 😱, I had to close everything except iMovie to render the video. This never happened before now and it's only audio and a graphic being rendered!

References from Youtube on captioning

• 👉 Use automatic captioning - YouTube Help
• 👉 Add your own subtitles and closed captions

It didn’t pick it up automatically, but it offered the option for you to type the captions. It was not as bad as trying to keep track of the times and what was said on the recording… in fact, it was a great experience. I don’t have a pic or screenshot, but the video plays and you when you type in the text box, the audio pauses until you stop typing. And you can rewind a few seconds before that, and listen to the audio again. It still takes longer than the recording, but at least all I have to worry is the content, not the times. When that was done, I clicked on the button to set the times for the captions. And this takes time, here a a few pics I’ve taken after I added and saved the captions waiting for the times to be set.

ℹ️ Note: I'm going to use Dublin Maker podcast I've been working on as an example for this post.

As it was late in the evening, I left it till the next morning to check. And yes, the captions are there! I listened to the first few minutes and all looks good.

You can also download the file, it’s SBV format as opposed to SRT format I was trying out before.

I’ve got a little bit of editing to do, so back to Garageband for the minor edit. Then the process again of:-

• Export MP3 from Garageband
• Import MP3 into iMovie (graphic already there from before)
• Export MP4
• Upload to Youtube Studio
• Edit the subtitles and make sure it's timing is correct

Then I was happy with the podcast, made the video live, and voila, all done.

Is there a better way? 🤔

If I wanted to I could have paid for the services or Buzzsprout's own partner (in this instance I am using them as the distribution platform), which uses their own file format. 😕

Or ask the community to help submit and transcribe via Youtube.

And if I do have a transcript at hand and it's not the file format for the Buzzsprout wanted, they suggested you can post the whole transcript on the podcasts description (which I've seen other podcasters have done). Not ideal, but at least it's there.

📢 All the other podcasters out there, any tips on transcriptions/captioning, especially free ways or using opensource ways of doing it?