Adding Captions to Articulate Storyline

Captioning Articulate Storyline presentations is easy with CaptionSync. This tutorial will guide you on how to export the media content of Articulate Storyline presentations, submit the media file for captioning, and how to have captions displayed during a Articulate Storyline presentation.

If you have YouTube videos (you own) embedded in your presentation, check out how to caption them in our article on how to caption your own YouTube videos.

NOTE: If you have Articulate Storyline 360, check out our Adding Captions to Articulate Storyline 360 tutorial instead.

Tutorial

Export the Media Content:

Articulate Storyline doesn't currently support exporting videos that were previously imported. So, for such videos, you'll need to submit to us the original copy of the media files that you have stored somewhere else.
But you can export MP4 versions of your screen recordings, and submit them to us for captioning. Click the drop-down arrow at the bottom of the Record Screen button, which is on the Home tab, if you're in Story View, and on the Insert tab in both Story View and Normal View. Select the recording you want to export. When the screen recording opens in Insert Slides, right-click the preview area of the window, and select Export movie.
More information is provided in Articulate Community's article on this topic.

Submitting Your Content:

Log into your CaptionSync account and go to the Caption/Transcribe tab.
Follow the onscreen instructions to upload and submit the media file. Choose the .PROD.TXT output from the Advanced Settings. If you don't see that output, open a Support ticket so that our team can enable it for you.
You may then proceed and make the Captioning request.

Once captioning has been completed, log into your CaptionSync account and download the .PROD.TXT output file. For an example of the .PROD.TXT file produced by CaptionSync, see the sample attached at the end of this tutorial.

Displaying Captions in Articulate:

Open the Articulate application and go to the presentation that should be captioned. Open the .PROD.TXT file in a text editor software.
Click on the first slide in your presentation and create a blank layer for your captions. Insert a text box onto the slide. Please note the beginning and end time of the slide, and copy and paste the associated text from the .PROD.TXT file.
Go to Insert -> Scrolling Panel and draw a scrolling panel box at the bottom of the screen. Drag and drop your text box with the transcript for the slide into the scrolling panel box:
Go to Insert -> Button and draw a button in the bottom right corner of your screen:
Type CC in the button and select any color for your button. In the button properties, go to Trigger -> Add Trigger.
With the button selected, click on Add Triggers in the Trigger panel. Set the Trigger Wizard properties to Action: Show layer and to When: User clicks it should be performed. Click on the OK button:
Copy/Paste the CC button above the scrolling text to place a copy in the captions layer.
Set the Trigger Wizard properties to Action: Hide layer. Then click on the OK button: