How to add captions easily to your videos using Rev.com.

I’ve recorded a quick video on using one of my favourite platforms, Rev.com. It is fantastic to sort out your captions for Facebook and YouTube and make sure you have transcripts of your videos.

 

Why you need to add captions

Several different research studies report anywhere between 80-92% of videos are viewed with the sound off! Research has also shown that video posts have 135% higher organic reach than regular photo posts.

Several different research studies report anywhere between 80-92% of videos are viewed with the sound off! Click To Tweet

Instapage A/B tested one of their own videos in multiple instances on the same day of the week at the same time, for 2 months — with and without captions. The data covered 16.5 hours worth of video and over 4,000 views and they found that on average:

• Total view time was 5% higher on the variation with captions, and it was watched by 3% more viewers.
• Reach of the captioned video was 16% higher than the one without.
• Reactions to the video were also higher on the version with captions, by more than 17%.
• Shares dropped when captions were removed, by nearly 15%.
• Video views were a little lower without captions, by about 4% — but 10-second video views were significantly lower — nearly 18%.
• CTA clicks fell by 26% when captions were removed.

The research all agrees that people like captions. So, if you made the effort to record a video then you definitely need to take the next step and add captions!

Using Rev for captions and then using their transcript as the copy for this blog means that I’ve also catered to people who prefer to read than watch a video.

Video Transcript

So here I am, I’m logged into my account at Rev.com. And you can see these are the files that I’ve had before. I’m always uploading things onto here. And I’m going to place a new order. Now, the reason to have captions is that something like 81% of videos are now watched without sound. Having captions so people can read what’s being said on your videos is really useful.

 

Placing Your Video Order

So I’m going to place a new order. And what I like to do is choose Captions. You have a Transcription, or you can Automated Transcription which is slightly cheaper. You can just have Subtitles, but Captions is what I’m going for. But the nice thing you can do in terms of captions is you can upload your files.

So if you have got your video somewhere, you just upload it. You can paste the URL. Or, which is what I really like to do, pull the video directly from my YouTube account.

I’m going to click on YouTube. I’ve already got my YouTube account linked. If you’re new to this, you’ll have to add your YouTube account yourself. The CC marks are where I’ve got close captions on my videos already. And as you can see, it says private videos can’t be selected so these must be public. I can tick this box to show any videos without a caption, or I could just search for the video.

I’ve just uploaded this video. It’s only a short one so I’m going to click on this and I’m going to add the selected video to the cart. And it’s on offer at the moment, so it’s only $1.10 a minute. That means this less than two-minute video is going to cost a total of $2.20. (Standard price is $1.25 a minute so still incredibly good value!).

Rev says it’s going to take two hours to do. I have to say Rev usually always does it in less time than that. But two hours is fine for me. I don’t need it any faster. I could rush my order. And then it’s another dollar a minute. It’s still not expensive. And I have to say the quality of their transcriptions is amazing. It’s really good.

OK, I’m happy with that.

 

Order multiple caption formats for your videos

What I want to do is add some additional formats. Now, this is the most economical way to do it. So what I’m going to do is add a transcript (to my order), rather than actually order a transcript directly. And I’m also going to add the Facebook ready SRT file.

By having that, I can then upload the video and the Facebook captions without just doing a YouTube link. But since Facebook prefers native videos I often like to upload a video directly onto Facebook and then add the captions. This gives me the option to do that. So all of that for $2.20, which I think is brilliant. You then click checkout, which is fairly straightforward, and you can pay on PayPal. Okay. I’ve just paid.

Before I go and get to the final element you can add a glossary or add a script. So you can upload your script here and add your speaker names. So onto this glossary, I’m going to put Canva. I’m going to put Be Your Own Graphic Designer in there because that’s the account I’m doing it with. And then I’m going to add Content Planner and then apply this. And you’ll see they say thank you, so polite! Now I put my name in the speaker box and apply that. And that’s all that I need to do. Okay. Then we’ll see what happens next.

 

Two Hours Later on Rev

So in less than two hours, I’ve got my captions back and here you can see, I clicked the link from my email and it opened up on this screen, which allows me to edit so I can go through and make sure I’m happy with the captions. If I wanted to play it through I could see how they timed. Timing is there as well. I won’t play you the whole video, that would be boring for you, but you can see how it runs along the bottom.

My voice from video playing - “Hello again. In the second video, we’re going to show you how to schedule your designs directly with Canva’s Competent Planner.”

And I knew that didn’t sound right when I actually said it. By correcting, it corrects it instantly on the captions. It was the one word I knew I hadn’t said very clearly so that’s the other reason why captions really help.

That’s it. The changes I make get saved instantly. And all I have to do now is click ‘Upload to YouTube’. And I click ‘Yes, upload my captions’. It’s instantly uploaded. And I just go to the video on YouTube.

Now when I play it the captions are there. Okay, I hope that helps you or anyone who wants to use Rev. As I said it’s a fantastic and really cost-effective service to use to get captions onto your YouTube videos. 🙂