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Video Captioning & Subtitling - What Advantages Does It Offer?

Andrew Russo
Andrew Russo
Posted in Zoom Dec 19 · 19 Dec, 2022
Video Captioning & Subtitling - What Advantages Does It Offer?

One of the easiest ways to improve your site’s visibility and gain more traffic is through video subtitling and captioning. When editing your video, adding subtitles or captions can enhance its effectiveness and impact. But why should you care about subtitling or adding captions to video content? This article will help you find the correct answers to this question.

The Advantages of Video Captioning and Subtitling

Captions and subtitles are essential for those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have learning disabilities. They also come in handy for non-native and native English speakers. Here are some attractive advantages that will convince you to get started.

Information Retention

Some studies have shown that the information retention rate is typically 95% when watching a video with subtitles. On the other hand, only 10% of people can recall what they saw without any supplementary information.

This means that if you are watching an online video and want to know more about it later, having captions enabled will ensure that you can absorb more information from the same video than without them.

Accessibility

When you add captions and subtitles to a video, it becomes easy for non-native speakers and those who are hard of hearing to follow the content. Captions are a great way to increase viewership and engagement by providing viewers with subtitles explaining essential information about their watching. 

Subtitles are ideal when people cannot understand what is spoken due to a language barrier. Captioning, on the other hand, is primarily used by deaf persons who have difficulty with hearing.

Boosting Viewership and Increasing Engagement

Video captioning is a great way to boost your viewership and increase video engagement. Whenever you add captions to your videos, most viewers can follow the content much better, regardless of their ability to hear or understand the language of the video. 

As a result, more people can engage with your content and even become subscribers as they know they will always understand your videos. Furthermore, it allows them to share your content with others, thus boosting your viewership.

Aiding in Comprehension

According to several studies conducted in 2018, nearly 4 out of 5 people prefer watching a video that includes subtitles as opposed to one that doesn’t have any supplementary information. In cases where the language barrier is not an issue, there are other challenges, such as accents that are difficult to comprehend or dialogue that is too fast for you to keep up. 

With the help of captioning and subtitling, viewers can comprehend the information much better. 

SEO Improvements

Subtitled videos have a higher chance of appearing in search engines such as Google and on platforms such as YouTube because they can read the text. This means your video has a higher chance of getting more clicks as it will appear among the top searches as opposed to a video without captions. 

Silent Viewing

Sometimes, your viewers may be in sound-sensitive environments like libraries or noisy environments like markets. In such cases, they can still watch and follow your content thanks to captions and subtitles.

Conclusion

Thanks to advancements in technology, it’s now possible for anyone to watch videos online with the help of subtitles and closed captions. And before you know it, your content will be viewed by people of all demographics.