HOW I SUBTITLE my YouTube videos 2020, my easy fast way for CC captions

Here is how I subtitle my YouTube videos in 2020 - really easily... or as easily as the clunky YouTube Studio lets us... Basically, I use YouTube's auto-generate CC closed captions to get a transcript, then I tweak that transcript so I don't have to type all the dialogue from scratch. Then it's simple to paste into "auto-sync" in the subtitles tab.

Why make your own subtitles?
Benefits include correcting the auto-generated captions, helping people around the world to watch your YouTube video in different languages (via auto-translate), getting a cool "Subtitles" or CC icon next to your video... plus, you know, helping people with poor hearing.

HOW I SUBTITLE my YouTube videos 2020, my easy fast way for CC captions!



0:00 How to subtitle Youtube video in 2020
0:43 How to add language on YouTube video subtitles tab
1:11 How to alter auto published subtitles and CC captions 2020
1:45 How to turn on YouTube subtitles keyboard shortcut for captions
2:10 How to open a transcript of the words used in my YouTube video
2:24 How to copy a transcript of my YouTube video into a Pages for Mac or Word document
3:46 How to format my subtitles: removing line breaks and carriage returns in Pages for Mac (for Word, FIND ^p INSTEAD OF \n)
5:15 How to unpublish or remove YouTube subtitles and CC captions
6:25 How to transcribe and Auto-Sync my YouTube video for subtitles/CC captions
7:20 How to break up YouTube subtitles and CC captions on a new line.
8:50 How to type in my subtitles for my YouTube video CC captions
10:25 How to publish subtitles for my YouTube video CC captions

TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

Hello, how do you subtitle your YouTube videos?

I have a really easy way to caption my videos and I’m going to subtitle a YouTube video from scratch - and I’m going to do this in real time so that you can follow along too.. every single step along the way.

I call this "How to subtitle YouTube videos in 2020 (my way which I find better), so let's go straight into YouTube studio.

The videos tab - and I’m going to go into the video I want to subtitle.
I’m going to add closed captions to "how to add chapters to your YouTube videos"

On the left hand side here on the tabs, go down to "subtitles".
Now in 2020 and maybe 2021 this is how the subtitles tab looks.
It's not a friendly welcoming place.
Some might say it's clunky, but here you can see that already there is an automatic English set of closed captions added, and over here under subtitles if you click on the three dots we can edit on Classic Studio.

These are the captions that YouTube have automatically added to your video.
They're the auto-generated closed captions.
We're going to unpublish these and replace them with ours, but the first thing I’m going to do is to actually grab these and use them as a transcript so that I don't have to type out my own subtitles.
You can actually use these and adapt them and do very little typing.

If we go back to the video and open it up in YouTube... if I hit play and turn on the captions you can press c - the letter "C" on your keyboard to bring them up, or the button at the bottom of the video.
These are the auto-generated captions.

Why would we want to add our own captions?
I’ve got a whole list of reasons - I’ll walk you through them later on but the auto captions have problems.
They add swear words and they spell your name wrong, so that's just two of the many reasons that means it's worth adding your own subtitles, and we're going to click on these three dots under your video and down to "open transcript"
Don't click "report". That's not going to help!
And on the top right hand corner of your desktop YouTube page you can see there's a transcript that's opened up.
This is where YouTube has completely transcribed your YouTube video for free and we're going to use these words the basis for our subtitles that we're going to add.
What I could do is just drag and copy these subtitles, hit copy and then go into a word processing program - I’m on a mac so that would be "Pages" and then I could just paste that transcript into a document.
But as you can see it's broken up all the subtitles with time codes and we don't need those.
We need a really clean transcript that we can put into the subtitles generator in YouTube.
So if I undo that - the first step is to hit the three dots at the top of transcript for "toggle timestamps" - to turn off the timestamps and that is a complete transcript of our video that's been written for us.
We haven't had to do any typing.
This is a great system.
Hit copy and we'll take that into pages on a Mac or you can put it into a Word document if you have Microsoft Word or Windows, Windows 10 if you're using a PC.
I’m using a Mac for this.

The next thing we need to do is to make the subtitles flow.
At the moment these sentences are broken up, the way the auto generated transcript broke them up, and that's going to make it look uh difficult and ugly on the screen so I’m going to remove all of the line breaks.

On pages on a Mac I’m going to open up "find" and then I’m going to look for the carriage return which is the the new line, and there's a special code for that which is backslash small "n".
And for "replace", I’m going to replace it with one space.

I’m going to hit space once and then I’m going to "replace and find".
You can see it is removing all of the new line breaks, so I’m going to hit "replace all"
Ta-dah!

This is the transcript that we're going to use to subtitle my video.
Let's go back to YouTube and we'll go down to "edit video" and on our dashboard here on the left hand side we're going to hit "subtitles".

Now this is how the subtitle section looks in 2020 it's not a pretty place.
Well done by the way for making it this far.
You WILL have subtitles.
You and me are going to subtitle your video.

So this is the "auto-generated subtitles".

Here you can see it says English (video language) and I’m going to edit on classic studio because that's how they do things in 2020.

Now these subtitles they're good - they're really good - the auto generated subtitles are good, but they misspell my name - which doesn't help.
Google uses these subtitles to help rank the video and help find if it's a good match for someone searching for your video.
So having things like brand names and your name being spelt incorrectly isn't going to help you, so we're already going to help that situation.

Up here on the top right hand corner we've made a copy of these subtitles so I’m going to hit "unpublish" and then go over to "delete draft" and then "delete draft", so now the auto generated subtitles have been completely removed.

It feels harsh but the reason I do this is that if I did this later, often I'd hit delete for the incorrect subtitles and it would delete MY subtitles as well, so I’m just going to purge them right now, knowing that I’ve got all of the text safely in the pages document.

We have a clean slate now which means I can click on "add new subtitles or cc"
Now it's opened up two options for language.
Although I’m in the UK and I’m British, the language I use is English, and I think it's a good idea to just hit "English".

I have a very funny feeling that English (United Kingdom) ranks your language a bit lower than English which is the language of the United Kingdom.
Now you have three options here, you can "upload a file" - I’m never going to do that.

That is for a proper subtitles data file, or you can "transcribe and auto sync" and the third option is "create new subtitles or cc"
I’m going to hit "transcribe and auto sync"
Now the idea of "transcribe and auto sync" is that you can play the video and type out the words as you hear them, like this.
"You know on YouTube when the video is broken..."
I’m just gonna hit pause there.

What you can probably see is that when you type, it pauses the video for you, so that is a good way to subtitle your videos.

You can just type it all out yourself, but I’m doing it my way which is a lot easier: which is to go back to the transcript, so I don't have to type it all out.

All the words are here... I just need to check them.
What I’m going to do now is to put the YouTube video on one side and my transcript document on the other and I’m just going to watch it through and make corrections as I go.

Remove any wrong words and add basic grammar like new sentences.
You can also hit carriage returns if you want clean line starts in the subtitles.
I’m going to do that in real time now so I’m going to fast forward this, I’ll see you on the other side!
So this is me fast forwarding through the process.
You can see me adding carriage returns and all of the little "i's" I'm changing to the correct big capital "I" because, you know, that's how English works.

And I’m also changing the spelling of my name - they spelt my name wrong!
That can't be right.
So now we have a transcript of our video and here's another benefit of doing this: you've got a transcript of your video!

Which you can put on your blog or turn into a book.
That's something for a whole other video, but it is helpful to have a transcript of your own words, and that's been really helpful for my video podcasts as well.
What I’m going to do now is to take this transcript and put it into "subtitles" and use this transcript to subtitle my video.

Select All and "Copy" which is command-C or control-C on a PC.
We'll go back to the subtitles section for this video.
There's refresh, there we go then we can hit "add"
Go to "transcribe and auto-sync", and instead of transcribing and typing it all out yourself, I just hit command-V "paste".

Down here, hit the button "set timings".
This process takes a few minutes - it can take 5 minutes, 10 minutes sometimes even longer.
In 2020 they've not made this system better.

It will not tell you when the subtitles have been synchronized with the video - that's what we're waiting for - and you have to remember to go back into the video to publish the subtitles when this process has finished.

It's... it's one of the bugs of the system and it's bugging me!
You can see on the subtitles section of your video, it says "generating timings".

It's very difficult saying that phrase!
Now would be a good time to drink your warm chocolate drink.
I think I’m allergic to this stuff but I can't stop drinking it.
Do you want some?

Check that you don't have a chocolate moustache.
This is generally the time when I check my description and I write my tags and all the other bits that I need to make for the video while the subtitles or closed captions are synchronizing.
To check on how your subtitles are doing just click on the subtitles tab again.
There, fantastic!

This is good, so now it says "draft by creator".
You're the creator and if you hover next to "draft" there are three dots.
This isn't a helpful system from YouTube is it?

Let's click on the three dots - edit on classic studio - and you can see on the left hand side all of your typing is now synchronized to the speech in the video.
You have the time codes down there - it's done it all automatically for you, and up on the top right hand corner you have two options: "delete draft"

We don't want to do that.
And "publish" so I’m going to hit "publish" and there it says "subtitles published" but just to make sure, let's open the video up on YouTube.

[VIDEO PLAYING] "You know on YouTube when the video is broken up into sections?"
So there it is!
You've now subtitled your video with your subtitles.
Has this helped?

Is there any part of the process that- that isn't clear or or doesn't work for you?
Leave me a comment below, it'd be great to hear from you and if you've reached this point of the video why not hit the thumbs up button, just to let me know that somebody reached the end.
I’m trying to get to 10,000 subscribers. I’m on about 2000 at the moment.
If you are trying to get to a 1000 subscribers there are lots of videos in the description that might help you on the way.

If you've got any questions let me know and good luck with subtitling your videos!
You can do this. I know you can. I know you can do this!
Can you please help my daddy get 10,000 subscribers. Just click in his face. Thanks bye! Alright, this is gonna be the proper one, right?


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