Create an Amara Account (Crowdsourcing for Captions!)

How to register for an Amara account.
How to sign into Amara.
Browse Amara Support Center for specific help.
Learn to search for desired YouTube or Vimeo videos on Amara
Review the Get to Know the Amara Editor

Create Captions on a YouTube Video You Don't Own through Amara

These days, if anyone uploads a video on YouTube, YouTube will automatically generate closed captioning. Let's use this to our advantage for videos we don't own but need to caption. Creating captioning from scratch takes a long time and it's a lot faster to leverage existing auto-generated captioning.

Step 1

Select your desired video on YouTube and verify that it does auto-generated captioning available by selecting the CC button in the button right-hand corner on the video. Auto-generated captioning lacks punctuation, spelling, and accuracy.

Step 2

Under the video, on the right, select the three-dot More button > Open Transcript

Step 3

On YouTube, take note of its URL.
You will need to copy and paste this URL in Amara to begin captioning.

Step 4

Once logged into Amara, paste your YouTube URL and begin subtitling
Select Start Subtitling > Subtitle for Free on Amara Public > Begin > Subtitle a Video for Free on Amara Public.
Copy and paste the YouTube URL into the textbox under Subtitle a Video for Free on Amara Public > select Begin.

Step 5

Select Add a new language! > This video is in English > Subtitle into English.

Step 6

Amara has three major workspace sections:

Review the guidelines provides keyboard shortcut tips. Using Tab to play/pause the video is very helpful.
Check the timing allows you to sync captions to the video's audio.
Submit your work allows you to type what you hear, sync timing, review, and complete.

Step 7

Begin typing your text or copying and pasting from YouTube into the Amara editor. Toggle timestamps off from YouTube.
(For ease, consider providing two lines at a time for captioning. You may copy and paste all of YouTube's transcript into Amara. However, it might be easier to copy two lines from YouTube's Transcript at a time into Amara, listen to the audio, edit the text as necessary, and repeat. Whichever is easier for you! This process will take some time.)

Step 8

Edit text as needed for punctuation and spelling and line breaks.
Per Amara's captioning guidelines, each line is no more than 42 characters.
Use the Shift+Enter key to create a new line with the caption thread. If you press just Enter you will create a new caption thread.

Step 9

Next, select Review in the upper right-hand corner in the Submit your work section to begin syncing captions to sound.

Use Tab to play and pause content.
In the timeline, select where the caption needs to begin and adjust the teal ends by either lengthening or shortening the caption. The goal is to sync captions to audio accurately.
When you are finished syncing captions to audio, select Publish.

Embed your newly captioned video

After Captioning in Amara, place the video Amara link to your newly captioned video into Canvas as outlined in the next section below. At this time you cannot embed Amara videos into Canvas.

First place your descriptive Amara URL that links to the captioned version in Amara onto your chosen Canvas content page.
Second, provide your guidance to students on how you want them to engage with the video. Will students need to take notes for an upcoming quiz on this topic? Is there something about the video you need the students to pay close attention to?
Lastly, embed the YouTube video.

Page orientation directions on how to weave Amara link with captioned video version.

Here's a text-based example.

View Paywall: The Business of Scholarship

This week I'd like you to watch the video "Paywall: The Business of Scholarship," which is available for free and with open access. Please take notes and jot down any questions.

Closed Captioned Version of "Paywall: The Business of Scholarship" [Amara]

(Basically, the top link takes a student to the Amara overlay with proper captions. But they can also choose to watch the embedded YouTube version if captions don't matter to them.)

This content is adapted from Public Course Design Accessibility Criteria and is offered under a CC Attribution license.