Why use Amara?
- You desire more control of the timing,
- you have a transcript from the production or
- you wish to avoid the risks of using a external cloud service like YouTube.
Upload to the Internet
Your un-captioned video needs a Web URL address. It must be uploaded or file transferred to the Internet. You can upload to YouTube, Vimeo or another external service or to your website. In WordPress you can upload it to your Media Library. Contact the COFA Web team for assistance.
Log in
- Go to the Amara website, http://www.amara.org/.
- Make an account by registering or log in through Gmail, Facebook or Twitter.
Tips for Writing Captions & Audio Description
Add Captions
- Paste the Web URL address of your video into the “Subtitle a Video Now” field.
- Click “Subtitle.” Doing this will bring you to a page with your video on it.
- Underneath your video there will be a tab that says, “Subtitle me.” Click it.
- Select the language the video is in and the language the captions will be in.
- Then, click “continue.”
- You will be brought to the subtitle page where you type while watching the video.
- Press tab to watch the video in 8-second increments. At this point don’t worry about timing. Just group words into a few lines at a time.
- Click “Done” and start syncing.
- Now you will sync the captions to appear in your video at the correct time. To do this, press tab to start playing the video, then the Down key whenever the next subtitle should appear.
- After the initial run through you can refine the timing of each individual subtitle to the millisecond by clicking the arrows.
- After each subtitle is correctly timed, click “Done” and go on to fill out the title and description for the subtitled video.
- Finally, Amara will give you one more chance to check your work and edit things before submitting (though you can always go back to the previous steps if need be).
- Once you’re satisfied, click “Done”. It’s that easy!
Upload and Add the Captioned Video to Your Website
At this point, you have two options.
- Upload captions to YouTube or Vimeo and Embed from YouTube or Vimeo (Option 1)
- Embed the video directly from Amara (Option 2)
Upload Captions to YouTube and Embed from YouTube (Option 1)
If you are using a content management systems like Drupal and WordPress, due to security concerns, you may not be allowed to paste iframe code. Our WordPress content editors can follow the instructions for adding media from external services. Our Drupal content editors should read about embedding multimedia. The COFA Web team is happy to help.
Embed the Video Directly from Amara (Option 2)
- From the amara.org home page, click your username and select “Videos”
- Find the page of the video you captioned.
- Once you’re on the specific video page, click “Get Embed Code.”
- Paste the code into your Web page file. If you are using a content management systems like Drupal and WordPress, due to security concerns, you may not be allowed to paste in code. Please contact the COFA Web team.
