Closed Caption Creation Using Professional Services.

How to Upload Files for RTF to Captioning and Transcription Services

We often need to create captions for publicly posted material. Here are some notes on workflow for creating subtitles for BluRay and DVDs authored in Adobe Encore, but the workflow is fine for files for YouTube as well.

Take your master file and export a super compressed version via Quicktime exporter, making the parameters as small as possible. Our goal is to make the file less than 2GB. It’s possible to export only an audio file, but it may help the captioner to work with the picture, especially if it’s narrative or documentary films for the RTF department. 

With this file one could create their own captions via Jubler or MacCaption, but it’s very time consuming and the experts can do it much more efficiently.

Make a request for captions with Automatic Sync online services

https://www.automaticsync.com/captionsync/

or if you are faculty or staff at UT, the Library system has a Caption and Transcription Service

https://captioning.lib.utexas.edu

These services are quick, provide good quality and value at about $1/minute.

Request an .srt file. This is widely used for captions to YouTube and can be converted to Encore format.

I like Jubler (http://www.jubler.org/) for converting captions. It’s free. Open the .srt file and then ‘File:Save As ’ to Adobe Encore Text file.

Once you import the captions into the Caption Track in Encore, you will need to automatically provide the minimum gaps between the captions that a blu-ray requires. After this step, you will need to make adjustments to the timing by dragging the caption handles in the timeline. You may also have to edit the captions for typos.