Speaker 1: Hey guys, BigNate84 here, and in this video, I'll show you how to add closed captions to your YouTube videos. Obviously, closed captions will help hearing impaired people understand your videos, but there are also some other great benefits to adding closed captions, but I'll get to that later on in this video. Closed captions are easy to create, I would say just about anyone can do this, and if you've created a Word document, you can create closed captions. I'm going to cover three main topics in this video. One, formatting tips. Two, step-by-step instructions that explain how to create a closed caption text file and then upload that file to YouTube. And three, why adding closed captions can expand your audience and help take your YouTube videos to the next level. First, let's talk about formatting. The first thing you need to do is create a plain text file. This is where your captions exist. Plain text files end with the extension .txt, and they can be created on a Mac using Text Edit or on a PC using Notepad. If you have trouble creating a plain text file on a Mac, there are a few menu settings you need to know. Click here to find out more. After you've created your plain text file, you are ready to start transcribing. One, remember to keep each line short. I recommend a maximum of 7 to 12 words per line. Now that's not a hard and fast rule, it's just a general range that will help ensure that the text is on screen long enough to be read clearly. Two, put a double space between each line. YouTube now has the technology to automatically sync the text to the video. You used to have to type in timecode between each line, but now it's super easy and all you have to do is make sure you leave a space. Three, capitalize the first letter of each line. This will help the viewer read the text more clearly. Your English teacher is going to hate this. Four, standard grammar and sentence structure can be ignored. Because this is conversational text, your emphasis when creating this document should be on the viewer's comprehension. Don't worry about periods, commas, or other forms of punctuation. In my opinion, the only exceptions should be apostrophes and contractions or question marks after you ask a question. Just keep it simple and clear. Five, determine natural breaks in the dialogue. Conjunctions and prepositions provide clean, natural breaks. Don't be afraid to capitalize them and use them at the beginning of each line. Of course, you can also use verbs or nouns to start each line. You'll really have to use your own judgment to capture each phrase and thought clearly. If this sounds like a lot of work and you have the extra money, you can always hire a professional transcriber or you can do what I did and hire your neighbors who are still in school looking to make some extra cash. You can even try a speech-to-text program like Dragon Naturally Speaking. I swear that's not a product placement. I did not get paid for that. But if you work for Dragon, feel free to contact me, BigNate84, on YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. Let's do a step-by-step example. Step one, open a new plain text file. In this example, I will be using TextEdit on my Mac. Make sure you remember to save it. I'm going to name this, How to Make Popcorn. And I'll save it to my desktop. Step two, start typing out your transcript. I recommend opening up your video and playing it in very small segments of four or five seconds and then hit pause so that you can type each word. Thanks for clicking over to BigNate84. Repeat until the transcript is complete. Step three, double-check your transcript. Listen to your video one last time to make sure every word is there. Spell check's not a bad idea either. Step four, log into YouTube and navigate to the video manager. This assumes you have already uploaded your video to YouTube, which I have. So let's go ahead and find the video. I'll go to the drop-down menu at the top of the page and select Video Manager. Before we do anything, let's take a look at the video as it is. You'll notice there's no CC button because we haven't uploaded our transcript file yet. Okay, let's go back to the video manager and find How to Make Popcorn. Again, you'll notice there is no CC symbol at this point. Click on the drop-down arrow and select Captions. Step five, upload your plain text transcript file. Under Type, make sure Transcript File is selected. Under File, go ahead and choose your file. Select Open. Under Language, I will keep that set to English and I will name my file BigNate84 Transcript. After that, click Upload File. It will take about a minute to upload and process the transcript file, but when it is complete, your viewers will notice the CC button at the bottom of your video. They will now have the option to turn on subtitles. Thanks for clicking over to BigNate84. In this video, I'll show you how to cook delicious homemade popcorn. You can subscribe by clicking on the BigNate84 logo. In conclusion, let's talk about why creating closed captions is a great idea. One, the primary purpose of closed captions is to help the hearing impaired. So if you are hearing impaired and you've stumbled onto this video or any of my other how-to videos, please give me your feedback. I want to continually improve my process so that I can communicate clearly to as many people as possible. Two, YouTube has a translate feature that will automatically translate your captions into over 60 different languages. Now it's not a perfect translation, but it's better than nothing and your viewers in foreign countries will at least get the general idea and understanding of your video. Thanks for clicking over to BigNate84. In this video, I'll show you how to cook delicious homemade popcorn. Thanks for clicking over to BigNate84. In this video, I'll show you how to cook delicious homemade popcorn. Three, the interactive script. This is especially useful for people like me who create how-to videos. The viewer can follow along step-by-step, skip ahead or skip backwards according to the text. Thanks for clicking over to BigNate84. In this video, I'll show you how to cook delicious homemade popcorn. You can subscribe by clicking on the BigNate84 logo. You will need a stove, a pot, and step three, shift the pot around side to side. Or, your videos can be indexed more efficiently. Google and YouTube will know exactly the content of your video. So, if you're trying to expand your audience and get more views, adding captions is a pretty good idea. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next video.