YouTube provides an "auto-caption" feature that works really well, but it does not include capital letters and punctuation. Standards for captioning require 99% accuracy. Thankfully, auto-captions can be edited for accuracy so you don't have to tediously type in your entire transcript. You can just correct the text that's auto-generated.
See the following video (1:16) for more information:
You will also need to create a transcript of your video that is linked either above or below the video. After using the Video Manager to correct your auto-captions in YouTube:
Click on the 'Actions' menu
Click '.srt file'
Go to subtitletools.com
Click on 'Convert to Plain Text'
Upload the .srt file and convert to text
Alternatively, you can follow these directions:
Go to your video in YouTube
Under your video there is a thumbs up, a thumbs down, an =+ button, and ...
Click the …
And open transcript
Now there is a … but vertical; click it
Toggle timestamps
Cut and paste the captions as a transcript
Either of these methods creates a transcript file, but the second method may require some formatting before you can post it.
Additional Tips:
Research shows the average time a user watches a video is 2 minutes, 30 seconds. Keep this in mind when creating your own videos. Break up longer lectures into a series of shorter videos and use a storyboard to help keep your videos succinct and on task.
When you upload a video to YouTube, it's better to mark it as "unlisted" rather than "private". The setting "private" will require students to also have a YouTube account. Marking it as "unlisted" will still keep it from coming up in search results.
If you are using a YouTube video in your course that you did not create and you notice it either does not have captions or does not have accurate captions, you can use a free tool called Amara to add captions. It synchronizes the captions so it will link from Amara, but play the video through the original source.
