Videos without captions are like playing the violin in front of an empty auditorium. Though you create your video, you miss out on huge potential when you overlook the importance of adding captions.
And, in the highly online world in which we live, it’s no longer a viable option to overlook the importance of captioned content.
Time and again, you have understood the marketing benefits of using closed captions and subtitles in your video. But, do you know what lies on the technology side?
When you use subtitling or transcription software, have you ever wondered about the technology these tools use to convert audio to text?
This article explores five technologies that video captioning uses to increase engagement and enhance the views a video receives.
Let’s understand how these technologies can increase the reach of your videos.
5 video captioning technology
Here are five technologies used in video captioning that enhance engagement:
- Automatic speech recognition (ASR)
The primary technology that subtitling and audio-to-text transcription software use is automatic speech recognition. The speech recognition technology breaks the speech into bits it can interpret, convert it to a digital format, and finally analyze the piece of content. One of the best examples of ASR is Apple’s Siri or Google’s Alexa, which allows you to convert audio text, which you can later translate to a language of your choice.
Interestingly, most ASR uses artificial intelligence (AI) to convert audio into text accurately. The AI works by matching the speech to a machine-readable format. With the growth in technology, these AI solutions no longer require words to be spoken clearly. More advanced AI solutions can easily transcribe accents, dialects, and natural speech.
As manual video captioning takes 5-10 times the video length, using transcription and captioning software can make your life less messy.
Amberscript’s audio-to-text transcription software uses ASR technology to convert speech into text and offers high accuracy. As it uses AI, the tool offers a fast turnaround time without compromising quality.
- Audio recognition technology
Another critical aspect of video captioning, transcription, and subtitling is the ability to separate sound from actual speech. The ability of the software to recognize the difference between crowd cheering, traffic noise, ball hitting noise, or even baby crying sound and natural speech makes transcription software successful and widely used in many industries.
Companies are burning the midnight oil to develop technologies for audio or speech recognition. This technology can help to understand that not every sound is necessarily a word. It has to decipher between noises and existing languages to provide accurate results.
Trint’s audio-to-text software offers AI audio transcription that offers 99% accuracy. The differentiating factor of Trint is that its technology matches the sound to the corresponding words in the dictionary and displays those words in the editor.
- Language identification
Usually, audio or video content to transcribe is in a single language. Often, the content can be a mix of two or three languages. For instance, during a panel discussion, some panelists might use a few words from their regional language.
In such a scenario, the audio-to-text transcription software must detect and identify different languages. The ability to detect language change and accurately convert it to a desirable language can cause subtitles and video captions accuracy.
Though such instances might be only a few, language identification can differentiate one video captioning or transcription software from another.
- Diarization
Another area that a video captioning or audio-to-text software focuses on is diarization, which is the software’s ability to differentiate between two speakers. For example, in a panel discussion, you might have multiple speakers. Sometimes one speaker speaks, and sometimes the other person contradicts the speaker.
Being able to separate speakers is essential for understanding the accent and dialect. It’s also essential to maintain accuracy. The diarization technique helps the software in inputting breaks and understanding when a new speaker starts speaking.
It helps in differentiating between different speakers and adds appropriate punctuation marks. With the continuous evolution of technology, companies use the diarization technique to note the speaker and associate them with a name.
This is bringing a landmark change in the way transcription software can perform captioning.
- AI vocabulary and context
Another area where video captioning software focuses is understanding what the speaker is saying. Though AI vocabulary and context are not technologies, they are essential for the ASR process. When an AI-enabled software receives an audio file, it tries to match the speech with the vocabulary it already knows. The software can transcribe words it already knows, but if it encounters a word that isn’t present in its AI vocabulary, it tries to link it to some other word.
For instance, is the speaker saying effect or affect? Do they mean here or hear? Or whether they are trying to say two, to, or too? The ability of a video captioning software to differentiate between similar sounding words or homophones is essential for providing accuracy.
To get homophones’ rights, understanding the context is essential. This can even apply to full sentences. For instance, AI-enabled software might confuse sentences like “He is a miner” and “He is a minor.” Though both are correct, your video captioning software needs to decide which one is appropriate for the context.
Tools for video captioning
After understanding the technology used in video captioning, let’s explore a few tools you can have in your arsenal to ensure your videos use the right captions:
As mentioned earlier, Amberscript is a one-of-a-kind software that seamlessly converts audio to text and helps in providing accurate captions and subtitles for your video.
What differentiates Amberscript from others is its ability to edit transcripts on its online editor.
To use this software, all you have to do is upload your video or audio file on their platform and create a first draft that you can improve using an online editor. Interestingly, this software connects the audio text with its online editor, making it easy to search for text and make corrections.
Amberscript’s editor includes a customizable speaker distinction and adjustable timestamps. You can then quickly export your file in different formats.
Pricing: Their pre-paid starts at $8 per hour of audio or video, and their subscription starts at $25 per month for five months of video or audio uploaded.
Trint is another powerful automated transcription service that seamlessly provides audio to text transcription.
The AI behind their technology generates decent-quality audio transcription from clear recordings and provides an excellent editing tool.
Trint provides an AI-driven solution accessible via a webpage that can seamlessly process audio recordings to create accurate transcriptions. Trint is a helpful software because it helps in transcribing meetings and interviews.
Pricing: Their starter plan starts at $48 per month, and their advanced plan starts at $60 per month.
Otter.ai is an automated transcription tool that offers a glimpse into the future of real-time transcription.
This software uses AI natural processing technology for its automated transcription. Their speech-to-text processing of the language and the speaker identification algorithm try to understand who is speaking and when in real-time.
What makes Otter.ai different from others is its ability to omit words such as “um,” “ah,” and “uh.” It doesn’t even recognize these words when you add them to the custom vocabulary of the application.
When using Otter, you can train the software to recognize your voice so that it can intuitively tag your name within a transcript.
It’s software that you can use to manage your custom vocabulary and ensure accurate transcription.
Pricing: Offers a free basic plan, and their paid plan starts at $8.33 per month
Key takeaways
You expect it to shine after putting tons of effort and thoughts into your video. So, consider taking the extra step by adding video captioning.
Companies that miss out on video captioning and subtitling miss many opportunities. Whether you want to subtitle recorded or live videos, you have a technology that can add captions to ensure a bigger audience, more accessibility, better customer engagement, and more flexibility.
While there are many tools out there, with each boasting of bringing a revolutionary change to your business, choose one that uses the most advanced technology because it makes things much more manageable.
With time, these tools can eliminate the need for manual proofreading or editing after an automatic transcription. Through training, your AI process can continue to develop and become better adept at understanding and differentiating between speech and sound.
So are you ready to adopt a video captioning software?
