Adding Subtitles to Video Modules

Subtitles make your videos more accessible to a wider audience, most notably opening up your content to audiences across the world and foreign languages, but also to those that benefit from text in addition to sounds such as the hard of hearing. 

With Academy of Mine, you can upload your own subtitle files in addition to the videos, and we will automatically sync them up. This requires a specific format called WebVTT (.vtt extension) for your subtitles, and in this guide, we'll be going over how to create the .vtt extension as well as how to add that to your video module. 

Note: Keep in mind that you will only be able to add subtitles to videos that have been directly uploaded--if you are adding videos to the module via Vimeo or YouTube, you will need to configure the subtitle settings on the platforms in question.

In this article

Creating a WebVTT file

First, what is WebVTT? WebVTT, or .vtt extensions, allow you to define subtitles for a video at certain time stamps. You can learn more at: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebVTT_API

To create your WebVTT file, follow these steps:

  1. Open a new file in Notepad or a similar .txt file creator.
  2. On the very first line write: 

    WEBVTT
  3. Leave the second line blank
  4. On the third line, add a unique Identifier which can be text or number. By default, it's best to just use numbers and start with the number 1.
  5. On the fourth line, the time for first cue has to be specified. This is essentially the time slot in the video at which the text is to be shown. For example, for a first cue starting at time 1 second and ending at 5 seconds, it is written as:

    00:01.000 --> 00:05.000
  6. On the next line you want to write the caption or text for this cue that is run during the allocated time slot (see above).
  7. To add another line of text for a new cue, leave a blank line and start with the second identifier. 
  8. You can validate the Webvtt content at: https://quuz.org/webvtt/

Adding Subtitles (.vtt) to Video Modules

Once you have created your WebVTT file (.vtt), you can add it to the appropriate video module. 

  1. From the Admin Dashboard, select Courses. Then under Modules, select Video
  2. Select the Video Module you would like to add subtitles to. You can also opt to +Create Video Module if you're creating a new one. The Edit Video Module or Create Video Module page looks like this, and is where we can add the subtitles to for directly uploaded videos:
  3. Once on the Edit Video page, select Direct Upload as the upload method. Using subtitles with Vimeo or YouTube videos is also possible, although in those cases you need to configure the subtitle settings on the platforms in question. For this tutorial, we are adding subtitles to videos we host directly on the platform.

  4. Upload and/or choose the video you want to use for this Module.
  5. Click the Upload Subtitles File button and select you subtitle file. Note that our system accepts only VTT filetypes to be uploaded. If you do not have a .VTT file yet for your subtitles, you will want to either find a platform or professional to help you create one, or you can use our Existing Subtitles field to create them right then and there. The latter option is a little more error prone in terms of formatting but you can follow our guide on how to create a WebVTT file above. 

  6. Be sure to click Update Module when you're done to save your changes

Video Walkthrough of Adding Subtitles

If you're more of a visual learner, check out this video on how to add subtitles.

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