Closed or Open Captioning with Camtasia

Adding Closed or Open Captions to your Camtasia videos is easy with CaptionSync. Camtasia is a screen capture and video editing program that allows users to associate captions with the media files, either as closed or open captioned videos. This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to add captions to your media files using Camtasia 9.

Text Tutorial

Export an Audio Track:

• Open your project in Camtasia. Go to Share -> Export Audio Only, and save an audio version of the media file.

Submitting your Media for Captioning:

• Camtasia supports the .srt format. So, in your CaptionSync account, go to Caption/Transcribe -> Advanced Settings. Under the Output Types tab, ensure the .srt format is selected.
  Camtasia also accepts the .smi captioning format, but it does not support line breaks in the captions, when using this format. So, if you want to use this format instead, select it under the Output Types tab, and then configure the number of lines per caption, under the Caption Appearance tab. Set "Lines per Caption" to 1. Check Save Above Settings as Default, and click Apply Changes.

• Make your Captioning request, using your audio file.

• Once results are available, download the .srt or .smi file from the Results Email or the Submission Details Page.

Import the Captions into Camtasia:

• In Camtasia, go to File -> Import -> Captions..., and browse for the .srt or .smi file.

• You can use Camtasia's caption editor to change several style attributes, like font style, color, size and horizontal alignment, and also to fine-tune the timing. Note that style changes will only be kept in the final format if you're doing Open Captioning.
  More information about using Camtasia's caption editor is available in their Captions article.

Export the captioned Video:

There are two export options available. If you choose to export the media file as a standalone .mp4 file, the captions will be rendered into the video as Open Captions. If you choose to export directly to YouTube, Vimeo or Screencast, Camtasia will upload the media and the caption files into those platforms as a closed captioned video.

• To export the media as an Open Captioned MP4 video, go to Share -> Local File... -> Custom production settings -> MP4. Then uncheck the Produce with controller option, and set the other settings according to your needs. Select the final settings on the next two screens, and finally click Finish. You can then play the open captioned video in any video player that supports the MP4 format.

• To export into YouTube, Vimeo or Screencast, go to Share and choose the platform. You will need to log into the video platform and then the media will be published with closed captions available.

Non-English content:

If you're using the .srt format with non-English content, the high ASCII (accented) characters present in the caption text will only be displayed properly if a BOM character is included in the .srt file. The norm for the SRT format is to use UTF-8 encoding with no BOM. Our .srt output is generated using UTF-8 with no BOM. So the workaround for non-English files on Camtasia is to add that character to the .srt file. You can do this by opening the .srt file on Notepad (Windows), and choosing Save As. Ensure Text Documents (.txt) is selected as Type, and UTF-8 as Encoding. Finally click Save. When you import the newly saved .srt file into Camtasia, it should read properly the high ASCII (accented) characters.