- If you're not already using captions in your online videos
whether it be YouTube or Instagram or TikTok or whatever,
if you're not using captions,
you are missing out on potential views and engagement.
In this video, with the help of my friends over at Rev.com,
I wanna talk about why you should be using captions
how I've been using Rev to do my captions
and some of the things that you can be doing
to increase your views and engagement.
And there comes the sun.
(upbeat music)
I don't know if its just because I'm getting older
but I absolutely love captions.
And I know I'm not alone in this.
I'm sure there are a ton of you out there
who leave your Netflix captions on all the time.
If that's you, hit that like button.
But most of us who are making content for YouTube
or TikTok or Instagram aren't making shows for Netflix,
unless, of course, you are Matt D'Avella,
in which case, Hey, Matt.
So then why should we still be getting proper captions done
for our videos?
Well, first and foremost,
it adds to the accessibility of your videos.
A lot of people use the terms subtitles
and captions interchangeably
but there are actually differences between the two.
Captions are intended for people who can see the videos
but may have trouble hearing it.
Subtitles, on the other hand,
are for people who can hear the videos
but don't understand the language
that the video is spoken in.
So by adding captions or subtitles to your video,
you are broadening the audience who can be watching
and understanding your video.
But here's the thing,
it's not just to make it more accessible
for people who can't hear or understand your video,
it's also to make it more accessible
for those who might not be in a situation
where they can have their sound on.
In fact, a study by Verizon Media shows
that 80% of people who watch with captions on aren't deaf
or hard of hearing,
and 80% of people said they are more likely
to watch a video in its entirety
if the captions are available.
So if someone is out in public, on a bus,
or in a waiting room or something like that
and they don't wanna have their sound on
'cause that would definitely make them that person.
If there are captions available,
it'll make the difference
between whether they will watch the whole video
or just scroll past, or maybe even say like,
"I'll watch that later,"
which we all know basically equates
to that video never getting watched.
And if the algorithm sees
your video getting watched all the way through
rather than being skipped,
you are way more likely to be suggested to more viewers.
Something else that you might wanna consider
for more mobile-only platforms like TikTok or Instagram
or even YouTube Shorts is burned-in captions.
And I'll explain how to do this on Rev in a bit,
But essentially what it means is
that the captions will actually be printed
onto a video file so when you upload that,
they're on there no matter what.
This is great for those platforms
because a lot of them don't offer the option
to have your own captions
where the person can turn them on or off.
This is great for something like TikTok
because people scroll really quickly.
And if they see someone talking
but they can't hear what they're talking about,
they're likely to scroll by.
But if they see the burned-in captions
and they're intrigued by whatever it is that you're saying,
they're more likely to either turn on their sound and listen
or just read the captions and watch the rest of the video.
And I can say this with some certainty
because I know it's worked on me in the past.
Okay, so we've got accessibility,
we've got pleasing the algorithm,
we've got catching people's attention,
but did you know the adding captions can actually improve
your search engine optimization?
YouTube and Google look at all sorts of information
to try and figure out what your video is about.
It looks at the title, the thumbnail, the description,
the tags, and it even analyzes what you say in the video.
But if you've ever watched YouTube
with the auto-generated captions turned on,
you'll know that they are very often very wrong.
So by adding proper correct captions
to your video through Rev.com,
you're not only giving it more information,
you're also giving it the right information.
For me this is actually a big deal
because I say a lot of technical terms
and model names and those kinds of things.
And if people are searching for those terms
or for those names,
it's much more likely that they'll find my video
if YouTube has the correct information.
For example, if I say Sony a7S III
and YouTube thinks I said Sonny ate seven ESPYs,
YouTube is gonna think that my video is about someone
who eats sports trophies, not a camera.
And Rev actually has a spot where you can add a glossary
of specific terms like this
to make sure that they're going to get it right.
Honestly, I'm pretty lazy most of the time
and Rev seems to nail it regardless
of whether I use the glossary or not.
But now with the proper a7S III in the captions of my video,
when somebody searches for a7S III,
YouTube is gonna be like,
"Hey, Dunna said a7S III like 900 times in his video,
we should probably show this to that person."
Okay, Hopefully at this point I've convinced you
that you should be doing captions on your videos.
Let's head over to Rev.com
and I'll show you how I use it to get my captions
as well as some cool tricks that you can use for yours.
Okay, once you have an account over at Rev,
this is what you're gonna see when you sign in.
And the first thing that I do is go over to Place New Order.
And then you've got options here, we've got Transcriptions,
Automated Transcriptions, Captions, or Subtitles.
Generally, I'm using Captions so I'm gonna click that.
Then we're gonna see this window here
where we can choose where video is coming from,
either upload a file from a URL
or we can do YouTube or Vimeo,
which works really well for me
because a lot of my stuff is coming from YouTube.
So as long as you've got a video up there
and it's either set to public or unlisted,
then you can do it this way.
So for example, I haven't done captions
for my Back From the Hospital video yet.
It's already public
so we're gonna choose that one.
Add Selected to Cart.
It's a 10-minute video, so it's looking at $11.
And it also gives you an estimated delivery
but you can also choose to rush your order
by adding $1 per minute,
so if we do that, it's gonna now be $21
but it will be done in three hours.
Because I'm impatient, I'm gonna do that today.
Then we have this option for burned-in captions.
Now I don't want this specifically on this video
but I'll show you how that works afterwards.
And then we've also got the option
to add foreign language subtitles
at $3 per minute per language.
So if you know
that your videos are gonna be hitting another market,
you can do this.
Although you can't do it with a rush order.
This little option down here automatically deliver files
back to YouTube is really cool
because they will automatically attach the captions
once they're done back to your YouTube video.
And then if you have any other specific file formats
that you want, you can do that down here.
I'm gonna hit Checkout.
Obviously, this is where you would do
your checkout information and pay.
And then once you paid,
you're gonna see this Order confirmed page
and it's gonna give you some options.
So like I said, we can add a glossary.
So let's say we wanna add a7S III
and then you can add definitions to the terms if you want.
You can also save different glossaries.
So I've got one called Camera Terms,
just things that are going to help the person
who is actually doing your captions
to make sure they're getting things right.
We can also add an entire script if you want to,
and then you can add speaker names in here.
So I could have Dunna and I could have Big Bob.
Seems like someone I would do a collaboration with.
And then if we hit Go to My Files,
we'll be back on this page here,
and we see that our file here is in progress.
And then I've got this folder that I've created
just to store all my old ones
that I've already done in the past.
And I'm actually gonna do one more here too,
so we're gonna drag and drop a file,
and I'm gonna do burned-in captions with this one.
And what the heck, I'm gonna rush my order too.
All right, so we've got two orders now.
We've got one that's for YouTube
and one that is for Instagram Stories
that we're gonna do the burned-in captions on.
So all we have to do is wait to get an email
that says they're done.
This is obviously the ideal time to secure the cup,
maybe some chocolate.
Hmm. (bell dings)
Hmm, that was quick.
All right, so we're back here.
You can see that the status is set to complete
and I can't promise this for everybody
but they were very fast this time around.
The shorter video only took them 6 minutes
and the longer video only took 40 minutes,
so they're pretty quick.
But once you've got your files, you can click here
and then it gives you the option to edit your captions.
When we click on the file, we'll get this player here.
You can see your captions are down below
as well as underneath here
so that you can set the start and end point of them.
You can watch through and see your captions
and how they're going to show up.
And then on the left-hand side here,
we've got our options for kind of editing and stuff:
spell check, find and replace, keyboard shortcuts.
And then we've got some options here
like removing the gaps between captions.
Basically what I do at this point is I'll watch it
through usually at 1.5 times
and I'll just watch and make sure that everything is okay.
If there's anything that comes up,
let's say that I wanted this to be 8-11
or something like that, I can do that.
That's not the case.
It is actually 811, just how they have it.
But you can go through
and you can change anything that you want.
And then you can hit Upload to YouTube up here
if you want it to go straight back to YouTube.
or you can hit Download and you can get an SRT file.
And that's basically the process
that I use for my YouTube videos.
And then if we click the other one here,
this one is designed specifically for Instagram.
(indistinct)
So, of course, the captions are perfect.
And now when I go up to my download here
I'm gonna get some extra options.
So we've got SRT, we've got the video,
and I've got additional options here.
So we can use the default styling that they give
or we can customize.
And when we hit Next,
now we can customize all of our captions.
So we've got different fonts here.
Make 'em a little bit bigger.
Let's bold them.
You can do no outline,
you can do an outline, you can do a wrap.
Got our background color here,
different colors for the actual text itself.
And then you can also set this
as your default style setting.
And then we can hit Download.
And then we get this window
that says they're making the video file
and then they'll let us know when it's available.
We'll get an email that looks like this
and we'll be able to download the video file.
Now, I've been talking a bunch about burned-in captions
as kind of one of the extra features that they have on Rev
on top of their transcription, subtitles,
and caption services.
Ever since I've been using Rev,
they have been adding cool new features like that
so make sure to head down to the link in the description
and give them a try.
And as always, I wanna hear from you.
Leave a comment down below.
Let me know, are you already using captions?
If so, why?
And if you're not, how come you haven't yet?
You should be.
And on your way down to the comments section,
make sure to hit that like and subscribe button.
Hit that bell notification
so you don't miss out on future reviews and tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching.
Thank you to Rev for sponsoring this video
and for being so darn awesome.
And I'll see you next time.
(wind whistling)
(keys jingle)
(Dunna chuckles)
Oof.