Captions and subtitles for your event video

Captions and subtitles help more people follow your event video. They serve viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, people watching without sound, and audiences who prefer another language.

We offer them on request and confirm them for each event, because they depend on the audio, the languages and where the video will be shown.

Captions, subtitles and transcripts

These words are often mixed up, so here is the difference:

Many events need more than one. For example, an annual dinner video might have English captions and Malay and Chinese subtitles. The accessibility planning guide explains the wider picture, and the W3C advises that accessibility is best specified during planning rather than added at the end.

Decisions to make before we start

Good captions begin with clear answers to a few questions:

1. Languages spoken: which languages the speakers use, and whether they switch within a sentence.
2. Languages needed: the caption or subtitle languages your viewers want.
3. Where it will be shown: social media, a website, a screen at the venue or a broadcast.
4. Style: captions on the picture for everyone, or a separate file viewers can turn on.
5. Names and terms: a list of speaker names, titles, organisation names and technical words.
6. Review: who checks the final text, and how many people must approve it.

The caption language planner turns these questions into a specification you can send us.

Why automatic captions need a check

Automatic captions are quick, but the W3C notes that automatic captions need accuracy checks and usually correction. At events the common mistakes are:

• Names of people, companies and places.
• Malay, English, Chinese and dialect words in the same sentence.
• Speech over music, applause or a loud hall.
• Technical terms and abbreviations.

We therefore treat a machine draft as a first pass and check it against the sound. A glossary from you speeds this up. If the audio is very poor, we tell you plainly, so you know what accuracy to expect.

Captions on new footage and on existing video

You can ask for captions in two ways.

• With our filming: we plan clean audio from the start, which makes captions more accurate. See full ceremony and speech recording and interview filming for outputs that often need captions.
• On a video you already have: send it with the languages and the destination. This sits alongside editing from existing footage, and we check audio quality first.

Captions on a social video clip usually need a different style from captions on a full speech, since viewers read faster on a short clip.

Translation

Translated subtitles require someone who understands both languages and the context. Tell us who will review the translation: your own team, a speaker, or a translator you trust. Tell us the languages you need and we confirm which we can arrange.

For live events, captions during a livestream have lower accuracy than captions prepared afterwards. We confirm what is realistic before you commit.

Review and delivery

Before final delivery you review the text, usually with the video. Corrections are collected in one place, and the timecoded feedback builder helps your team do that clearly. The final video acceptance checklist covers what to check before approving.

You receive the files agreed in the scope, such as a video with captions on the picture, a separate caption file, or both.

What moves the quote here is the length of the video, the number of languages, the audio quality and whether translation is needed. See how we quote, and use the event video brief builder to gather the details first.