Hello everyone, and welcome back to my channel Jennifer Marie where I teach you different
ways that you can make money online working from home. If you are one of my subscribers, you know
that a lot of my videos focus on how to become a transcriptionist or a captioner. On my channel, I
have many different playlists about transcription jobs for beginners, and playlists on how to
improve your transcription and English skills. And one of the most common websites that people
want to work for is rev.com. So what I decided to do was order captions for a video of my own
to give you an idea of what a finished captions example looks like. And this will give you an
idea of what you are expected to do when you are captioning for Rev. Or if you're interested in
purchasing captions from Rev this also gives you an idea of what it will look like. So what is
captioning and transcribing a lot of people don't know what the difference is. transcriptionist
type out speech and convert audio files to text, clients will receive a text document. Captioning
involves typing out English language speech or another language. In addition to atmospheric music
and lyrics. Captioners also have to sync captions to audio and split sections into caption groups.
Clients will receive a .SRT file that they can upload on a platform like YouTube. So the audio
or video files that you caption can range from interviews, TV shows, YouTube videos, meetings,
phone calls, Zoom calls, etc. So what do you need to get started as a captioner or transcriptionist?
You need to have a computer or laptop. You cannot do this job from a smartphone or tablet.
It has to be a computer or a laptop. You also need headphones so that you can clearly hear the audio,
and a foot pedal is also recommended. But it is not a requirement. I do not recommend investing
in a foot pedal or new headphones until you get hired by a transcription company.
First of all, if you want to get hired by Rev, it is very important that you read Rev's style
guide completely. You can search for the updated style guide on Rev's official website to help you
while you are captioning or transcribing. This video is meant as a helpful guide to help you
understand how to caption I am not giving out answers in this video. In order to become a
successful captioner or transcriptionist, you need to pass the exam on your own. But hopefully this
video will give you some tips on how to caption as I show you a perfect captions example from people
who actually work for Rev. To find the latest Caption Style Guide, just go on to Google and type
Rev Caption style guide. And here you can see the latest one that I could find is Rev Caption Style
Guide version 4.0.1. And it's a 28 page style guide, which shows you everything you need to know
in order to caption for Rev. Okay, so I ordered captions from Rev I have a skit that I did with
my family for my mom on her birthday a few years ago. And I decided this was a perfect example to
use because there were many different speakers. We use music. We had narrators. So this is my
finished file. Now this I ordered as a client for Rev. If you follow my channel, you will know that
in the past I also worked as a captioner for Rev and still have an active account as a captioner.
So when you are captioning for Rev basically, you will be working with the Rev dashboard which looks
like this. And you will be watching a video and typing out these different captions and syncing
it with the video. So this is the file I received from Rev after they caption my video. And this is
a good demonstration of what you are expected to do when you are taking the test and also when you
are working as a captioner for Rev. So I want to go over some of the most important things
to help you pass the exam. So the first thing is lyrics and music. If you hear music in a video
with lyrics, you have to add a musical eighth note at the start of every caption group containing the
lyrics. So this here is a caption group. And in my video, it began with the happy birthday song.
So the captioner added this musical eighth note at the start of every caption group containing
the lyrics. So happy birthday to you, Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to you.
You can see just at the start of every caption group do not include a dash or a speaker ID for
lyrics. So here we just have the musical eighth note a space and then the lyrics.
Capitalize the beginning of each caption group, so you can see there's a capital letter
at the beginning of each caption group. Don't use ending punctuation when typing lyrics.
So you can see there is no period or question mark or anything at the end of these lyrics.
The second thing I want to talk about is atmospherics. We use atmospheric to
describe sound effects, sounds, background music, foreign language, etc. So you can see right here,
(laughs). This is an atmospheric. We ordered a cameo for my mom. And she says here,
I'm sure there's going to be lots of roses and (laughs) and lots of can I steal you for a sec?
So she laughs here, and that is incorporated in this caption group. So we use parentheses and
lowercase unless a proper noun is used. So this is the type of parenthesis we use. Now in this case,
we know she is laughing, so we just put laughs because we know it's this woman. But imagine
there was someone in the background laughing. You could put Jack coughs or Jack laughs
or man coughs. We only use a capital letter if it's a proper noun, like a name. So let's
say you knew the person coughing was named Jack. You could put Jack coughs. Also atmospherics must
always be in the present tense. Okay, so we don't say laughed, -ed to talk about the past tense.
It has to be the present tense. Here's another example. We have mouth crunching, somber music,
tape scratching. All of these are atmospherics, tape scratching and mouth crunching again.
It is the action. It is in the present tense, you do not use the past tense with atmospherics. And
you can see that these ones are all on their own line. So if the atmospheric lasts for at least
two seconds, or it has some silence before and after the atmospheric, you can put the
atmospheric in its own caption group. Again, all of these rules are in Rev's style guide.
I just want to show you what it looks like when you are actually using Rev's dashboard.
You've never seen anything like this.
Previously on The Bachelorette.
Okay, the next section is speaker labeling. So if the speaker can be visually identified as
the person speaking, use a dash and a space at the beginning of a speaker's monologue. So in
this video example, I was speaking and I was a new speaker. So you put a dash, then a space and then
the sentence of whatever the person is speaking. When there's a change of speaker, for example,
here, this changes to a different speaker, we have to put a dash and a space again, but only
if you can visually see the person. So every time there is a change of speaker,
we have to put a dash and a space to signify that it's a new speaker.
If the speaker cannot be visually identified as the person speaking, you must use a dash
and a space plus their first name or their known character name. If the speaker's name is unknown,
we use a dash and a space plus some other description. For example, narrator, blonde man,
interviewer. So in this video, it switched from me speaking to the narrator. And because we could
not see the narrator on screen, we have a dash and then these brackets and note the style of
the brackets. It's different from parentheses, and then a space and whatever the narrator said,
and then it switches back to me. So we have a dash. Thank you so much for planning this
date for us, again, because we can see me on the screen. So let's look at the example.
Tonight, Jill is down to her final two men,
Juan Pablo and Shawn, who for some reason brought his three...
Okay, so you can see that when the narrator was speaking, we could not
see them, but we know it's the narrator. So we have narrator in brackets, and then when
it switched to me speaking, it was a new speaker and you can see me on the screen. So we just have
a dash and a space and then the caption of what I said. And finally, I want to talk about caption
groups. So this here is a caption group. I'm just naturally fun. What? what is that? That's water,
water. Each of these are caption groups. Caption groups can never exceed 60 characters in length.
Captions should begin and end with natural breaks in the conversation or sentence structure.
You create new caption groups at the end of a sentence. However, if two short sentences are said
by a speaker in under one second, you can put them in the same caption group. So you can see here.
I'm just naturally fun period, enter. What? What is that? Because these are two short sentences,
and it is said by the speaker in under one second, we have it in the same caption group.
Here's another example. I'm sure there's going to be lots of roses and laughs and lots of can
I steal you for a sec? So I hope that you have a blast. You can see that we divide the caption
groups with natural breaks in the conversation. Often we begin a new sentence with a conjunction.
For example, any of the fanboys conjunctions: for, and, so, but, yet, nor, and that way, it's
easier to read. We wouldn't split it here. For example, I'm sure there's gonna be lots of roses.
We try to end the caption group naturally, so it flows better. So I wanted to do this video to
show you an example of what perfect captions look like from someone who works for Rev.
So you can get an idea of what you are expected to do when you are captioning for Rev. If you
want more detailed videos on how to caption, you can watch any of my videos in the playlist that
I will link to in the description below. But I wanted you to know some of the most important tips
that I feel are important when you are captioning. I hope that these tips will help you when you are
taking the test or that they will help you if you have been approved to be a captioner for Rev and
want to make sure your captions are perfect. If you have any questions make sure to ask me in the
comments section. And if you want tips on how to improve your punctuation, so you can avoid making
any errors. You can check out my Sparkle English channel as well. Make sure to like this video
and subscribe for more tutorials on how to make money online. And I will see you in my next video.