Using AST DBA Verbit U.S. and making a Submission (Prepaid)

Thank you for choosing AST DBA Verbit U.S. for your captioning and transcription. This tutorial describes in detail how to use our system and make a submission (prepaid accounts).

For more information about our system, read our Background on AST DBA Verbit U.S. article.

NOTE: Prepaid balances are retained for 4 years from the date of purchase (credits purchased prior to April 1, 2019 are valid for 5 years).

Text Tutorial

Logging into your Account:

• When you first sign up for a AST DBA Verbit U.S. account, you receive a Welcome email with your username and password. Keep this email for future reference. You can log into your AST DBA Verbit U.S. account in our login page.

• When you log in for the first time, you have to agree to the Terms and Conditions. There may be News to read, when you log in. These news items contain important information. Ensure you check each one before marking them as read.

• In the Help page, you can find the link to our Support Center, current price sheets, and policy documents.

• Not all features are initially available, but you can add them at any time, for free. These include batch uploading tools, integrations to 3rd-party systems, the translation of your results, submitting URLs to your files, among others.

• If you're looking to make Live Captioning requests, check out our Live Captioning tutorial instead. Before placing a Live Captioning request, please open a Support ticket so that we can discuss the Billing arrangements.

Adding credits to your Prepaid Balance:

• To view how many credits each service requires, or what services your current balance will get, click the Prepaid Credits link, in the upper-right corner.

• To purchase credits, click Buy more, upon login (upper-right corner); or open the Billing tab. You will see the total credits available, and a detailed list of how many credits each service requires. You can then either purchase credits for a specific service or services; or just purchase a certain amount of credits. If you purchase credits for services, you can then select the priority required, and/or add-on services.
  Note that there is a transaction minimum; any remaining unused credits must be used in the following 4 years (credits purchased prior to April 1, 2019 are valid for 5 years). Also note that for one week following a transaction, you can add more funds in any amount.

• When purchasing a specific service or services, you need to buy credits that correspond to the length of the media file(s) and the services required. For example, if your media file is 1 hour, 39 minutes and 12 seconds, and you require Captioning and Transcription, you'll need to purchase credits that correspond to 100 minutes of Captioning, and 100 minutes of Transcription. So, select Captioning and Transcription, and click Next:

• Then choose the priority for the transcription, and enter the number of minutes required (in this case, that would be 100). Click Next:

• Finally, click Generate Invoice:

• On the Invoice page, you'll find a link to pay it via Credit Card: Pay Now via Credit Card. Once the invoice is paid, the credits will be added to the balance and you can place your request.

Making a Submission:

• Now that you have added credits to your balance, you can make your submission. With CaptionSync, you can either upload your own transcript along with your media file; or you can submit your video for both transcription and captioning.
  Note: if you want to upload a group of files, or a really large file, take a look at the different options first:

• Upload a group of files.
• Upload a large media file (> 2 GB).

• If you only need a transcript, ensure you have the submission type of Transcription Only. You can do that in the Change Submission Type page. Then, you need to use the New Transcription Submission page to make your request.

• To request captioning, you need to use the New Captioning Submission page:

NOTE: If you also need to request Audio Description for your video, you can add that service to your order under Step 3, in the New Captioning Submission page. 

• First, the Description field. Put the title, or a brief description. Note that this description is just for your use, as nobody will be reading this.

• Mouse over the several fields and click the question marks to see more information in our Support Center, if you have questions.

• On the Transcription field, Transcription and Captioning bundle is selected by default. You can choose Captioning Only if you have your own verbatim transcript. Check our Transcription Guidelines article for more information on how to format your transcript.
• If you selected Transcription and Captioning bundle, you can select the Transcription Turnaround time; and you can also expand Add Transcriber Guidance to add pertinent information for the transcriber, like making specific terminology available. If you need to have the speakers identified, you'll need to select the desired ID format from within the Speaker ID Format drop-down menu, or choose the No Speaker ID option:

Note: If you select a format for identifying speakers by name, you'll also need to provide the names in the Speaker name(s) field, otherwise you will not be able to submit your request. 

• Next, browse for your media. Click the question mark to see which formats we accept.

• Check your default settings:
• If you're not sure about which outputs you need, check out our article on this topic for more information.
• For information on how to set the caption appearance settings, check out our article on this topic.
• If your media is not in English, ensure you choose the appropriate language setting under the Language/Content tab.

• Finally, click Start Upload. Ensure you keep the browser window open up until the upload is complete.

• Once you see the Success screen, click on Status of Submissions, and check the duration to see if it's correct. If the duration is not correct, cancel the request immediately.

• Results will be emailed to you and they can also be downloaded from the Details page. You can also see the appearance settings and billing information for your request.