Speaker 1: One of the questions I get asked the most about indie film distribution is how to create closed caption files. In this video I'm going to be showing you the easiest way to get these done. I want to start this video by saying that I have self-distributed my film through Amazon Prime Video Direct as well as FilmHub. So what I'm going to do here is going to work on both of these platforms and most likely other platforms as well. However, closed caption files are pretty universal so you should be able to use this tutorial anywhere that requires captions. You will 100% need to create closed captions for your film if you're going to try to get on any major platform. Every platform with the exception of YouTube or Vimeo requires you to have a closed caption file. If you were looking to self-distribute through Amazon Prime or FilmHub like I did, you are definitely going to need one of these. Long ago in a far away YouTube land, I used to recommend that if you couldn't afford to pay somebody to do the closed caption files that you could create them yourself. And the following years I was met with a lot of people with a lot of comments and emails from people who started having QC problems after doing this. I want to say on the record that I no longer recommend creating closed caption files yourself. That's fine if you're doing this on YouTube or Vimeo where the requirements and all that don't matter as much, but for any professional platforms like Tubi, Amazon, Apple, and such, you're going to want to get these professionally made. I personally like Rev.com. I've been using Rev for about five years now and I've yet to have any QC problems with any of the platforms that I've either of these platforms. Full disclosure, I do have an affiliate link in the description of this video if you decide to use this service. It helps me a lot with creating these videos, but you're absolutely not required to use it. Or if you want to use some other service, that's fine too. Or if you want to use Rev and just not use my affiliate link, 100% okay with that too. However, if you do want to use my link, of course I'm going to love you for it. So let's get into actually creating the closed caption files. Before we get started, we need to look at the requirements for both Amazon and FilmHub. I have both of these linked in the description for easy reference. Now, I will say if you use a service like Rev.com, you can pretty much forego all of this because the files that they create will 100% work on their service. And the same goes for FilmHub, but it's good to review this and be familiar with it if you are trying to attempt to do this yourself and not listen to me. But let's just go over this really quickly. So for the United States, you need to have a separate caption files in the localized language. For the United Kingdom, you need to have audio or captions in the localized language as well as Germany. And if you are doing this in Japan, you need to have burned-in subtitles in the localized language. And it says, for example, if you created a movie in English and you want to have German closed captions, here are how your movie will be impacted in each location. U.S., you will not be able to publish your movie with German captions. You are required to have separate English CC file. United Kingdom, you can publish your movie with German closed captions because the film already has an English audio file. Germany, you can publish in Germany because you have added a localized German closed caption file. Japan, you will need to burn-in Japanese subtitles into the movie. Closed captions aren't toggle-able for customers in Japan. So even if you upload German closed captions for the movie, it will not be visible to customers. And here are some additional requirements. All captions must conform to match the video source, obviously. All dialogue in video files requires captions in the native language for the content. English captions are required for all published in the United States. For an example, in a movie listed as available in the United States, all dialogue in English or any other language spoken in the movie must have corresponding English captions. I'm going to skip this next one. All time text needs to start at the zero hour time code. Obviously, Prime Video only accepts captions files that are UTF-8 character encoded. When working with third party captions provider, please ensure that captions output the UTF-8 encoded. We provide a collection of sample files for various caption file formats. Again, you should be able to accomplish this on Rev. If you have both captions and subtitles available for a title, we prefer to receive closed captions slash HCH to improve the viewing experience for customers who are deaf and hard of hearing. The language of a title's metadata determines the locations to which it can be published. A mezzanine or caption file matching the metadata language is required to publish to that location. And then they have some information about what type of file that you want to publish. If you have a caption file that you want to publish to that location, you can use. They have a whole bunch listed here, but we are going to focus on the .srt file because that is the most universal between all these platforms. And then they have some other information for subtitles and content without dialogue. If you want to read that, again, this is linked in the description. I'm not going to be going over it here because I assume that you aren't making a silent film and you aren't using a lot of subtitles. But if you are, the information is obviously here as well. Okay, so that is all the information. So we're going to move over to FilmHub now. These are pretty much going to be the same, but we're going to go over a few different things. We require all content be submitted with English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, SDH. So when you see SDH on FilmHub or Amazon, that's what they're talking about. They talk about why they require this, but we're not going to go over that. You can read that on your own if you want. We just want to get right into the requirements. We prefer the subrip, which is the .srt format in plain UTF-8, which is, exactly what Amazon requires too. And they also have one other acceptable file that you can use, but we're not going to use that. Single line max, 43 characters, unbreak subtitles shorter than 43 characters. Here's a couple other requirements. But again, since we're creating these in Rev, we're not going to worry about that too much. They do have some stuff for mixed language titles. I'm not familiar with that, so I'm not comfortable talking about it. But if you do have mixed language, there is some information here about that. And they do have some tips and tricks for submitting. But again, we're not going to worry about that too much because this is a pretty easy to follow tutorial and this should work for you. So now let's go into actually creating the closed captions. So we're going to go to Rev.com, which you're going to want to make an account. So go and make an account. I'm going to log into mine. Now, when you log into Rev, you're going to be met with all of your other files. So I've created a bunch, as you can see here. So there's a testament to how well this works for me. They recommend, or they say they have like 90% of the files that they're going to use. So I'm going to go into Rev.com and I'm going to go into Rev.com and I'm going to go into Rev.com and I'm going to go into Rev.com and I'm going to go into Rev.com and I'm going to be pretty much true. We're going to talk about that here in a little bit, but let's go ahead and kind of talk about how you're going to do this. So when you log into Rev or a place like Rev, if you're not using Rev, but with Rev specifically, we're going to go into place a new order, and then we're going to select one of these. Now they do have a few different options here. Human transcripts, AI transcripts, human captions, AI captions, and then global subtitle. Now they do have different pricing for each of these. So we're not going to focus on the transcriptions. We're just interested in the captions. So for the AI captions, they will do it for 25 cents per minute. Now for a human, it's going to cost you $1.50 per minute. I've never personally used the captions before, but it is a very good option for what I'm about to show you next. Once we actually get into after they actually do their captions. So if you're looking to save a bunch of money, I guess you could do that. But I've only personally used the human based captions. So choose wisely, I guess. So I'm just going to pick AI captions for now. And then from here, you're either going to upload your file. So if you have your main video file, if it's like a smaller H264 file or something, that's 100% okay. If you have a link that's online, you can do that too. Or you can pull the video directly from YouTube or Vimeo. So those are definitely viable options. As well, I don't remember exactly what I did. I want to say that I uploaded the file. So you do have the ability to do that. And then this is per the 25 cents of the $1.50 is per minute. So for an example, my movie is about 118 minutes long. So for the AI captions at 118 minutes, that would put me at about 30 bucks. And for the human captions, that would put me at about $180 ish. So you can see that's a pretty big difference. And then for the AI captions, that would put me at about $180 ish. So for the AI captions at 118 minutes, that would put me at about $180 ish. So for the difference with the AI, they say they can do it within 98% accuracy. So if you need to save a little bit of money, I guess, you know, you do have that option available to you, but you may have to do more editing work. So once you decide on whatever file that you're going to upload, you'll add your file, you'll sign in if you're not already signed in, and then it'll tell you what it's going to cost you. And then you'll pay for it. And then after that, it'll say, oh, this is going to take 24 hours, 48 hours, something like that. Usually I've gotten all my files back within a day. And that's even with the human. So just know it may take a couple of days, but this service has always been relatively fast for me. And then once you actually get the file, it's going to show up on here, you'll probably you'll get an email for it. But you can also just log into your account. And then you're going to have, you know, it's going to show up on this main screen here. Now, the nice thing about Rev, and I'm sure many of these other companies too, is that you're able to double check your files before you actually download them. So if something isn't right, you're able to pull up this caption editor. So you just select the movie. And then you're actually able to you can see we got the whole screen here. So I'm going to turn the audio down. But if I were to play, now my captions are going to show up here and I can double check everything is spelled correctly and all that. So this is where using the AI one may be okay, because you have the ability to double check all the captions are done. So they're going to make sure that the captions are done properly, as far as formatting, making sure you know what, like, as you can see here on screen, this is anxious electronic music. So there are some requirements on what they need to use. And then also on this next caption right here, you can actually see a character's name, they do ask if you have like a script, or, you know, a list of characters and stuff like that, anything that would help them out, you can absolutely upload that as well. Because I didn't get very far in the purchasing process, it didn't pop up for me. But if you do have a script of any kind available, or just some sort of sheet with all of your characters, names and all that, it definitely helps them, but it's not required. And then there are some additional things you can do. So we have the original version, you can change the atmospherics, if you need to, you can replace casual words with formal, for an example, gonna to going to, which is something I've done before, replacing US words with UK spelling. And removing gaps between captions, you do have all these options to do that before you actually download the file. And then there's a little bit more information on how to do that. So I'm going to go ahead and And then there's a little bit more information on how to do that before you actually download the file. And then they do have some keyboard shortcuts, you can actually search for certain words, spelling check, etc. But once you're done, everything's edited, and everything's exactly how you want it, you'll be able to download your file. So we're going to go to the top right corner here, select download. And this is where you're going to be able to download whatever file type you need. So it's going to ask you which file types you need. But I don't know why they do that when they just give you all the options anyway, but we want the dot SRT file for format. So you'll be able to select that wherever that is. Let's look for it real quick. It's the first option. So they make that very easy for you. They have some advanced options here on when you want to start it, we need to start this at zero hours, zero minutes, zero seconds, this should match the frame rate of your movie. So whatever file you upload, make sure that's the frame rate that you want across the board on every single platform, and it should match. Then you just hit download, and then you just download it like a normal file. And that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's it. So that's pretty much it. It's really, really simple. That's why I recommend doing it. With the new AI options, they make it a little bit cheaper. So that way, if you know, you need to save a little bit of money, you have the ability to do that and still get your captions professionally made. That's all the basics for closed caption files. But now let's get into some of the most common issues you may run into when creating these. So the issue that I see the most with filmmakers is that their closed caption files do not sync properly with their film. There is a simple fix for this, and I'm going to show you it. Right now. So I have Premiere Pro open right now. I have my film and I imported my .srt file. Now you can see here it says 30 frames per second, but honestly, they all say 30 frames per second. It should still match whatever frame rate that you uploaded with. So what I'm going to do, I have my video file on its own timeline. I'm going to add the closed captions to the timeline. And then you just want this to start at the time. So the source code time, and then up here, you should see all of your closed caption files show up. So now what you're going to want to do and go through your film and make sure everything matches. So once you go through, double check all your captions, make sure everything's aligned how you want. You'll be able to export your film, which you don't actually have to export the entire film. You could just export the closed caption file, or you could just export a low res version of this. But in the export settings, you have this caption. So you can see here, you can see the caption setting here, and it will export in the .srt format. Just select, create sidecar file. And it'll create a file just like we downloaded from Rev.com. And from there, it should match your frame rate. Now you're going to want to double check that this still matches inside the platforms. Amazon makes this a little bit difficult, but you should be able to do this inside of FilmHub. They have a native video player. Once you upload your film and the captions, they have a video player and you can double check, make sure everything's aligned. So make sure everything lines up. From there, you can take it to Amazon and assume that everything's going to work fine if you get that error. And the next most common error is the frame rate error within your closed captions. Again, inside Premiere, if your frame rate is not correct, like mine is not currently, like I said, you're able to move all your captions around. So if you've got to move them around a little bit to make a match, you're able to do that pretty easily. And then just follow the same process for actually exporting the .srt file. There are a few less common issues that I won't get into here, but I will link resources to both Amazon and FilmHub in the description if you do run into anything that I haven't talked about. But feel free to let me know if you have any questions or issues inside the comments. Shoot me an email that's linked to my bio and I will answer them as best as I possibly can. And of course, if you are looking to take the next steps and upload your film to Amazon or FilmHub, I do have a couple of links there for both of those platforms and how to do that successfully. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you on the next one.