Kaltura is the cloud-based video management system behind My Media and Media Gallery, which are Canvas LTI tools. Note that:

• Kaltura appears in some places in My Media and Media Gallery and in the company's documentation and user guides.
• Course Gallery is how you access Media Gallery in Canvas. 

The Kaltura Video App for Canvas User Guide has full instructions on using My Media and Media Gallery. The instructions here are specific to Virginia Tech. To see other Kaltura topics, please click on the guide for your role:

• Video Content Management - Using My Media and Media Gallery (for Instructors)
• Video Content Management - Using My Media and Media Gallery (for Students)

This article discusses how to caption videos using Kaltura.

Contents

• About Captioning
  
  • Restrictions
  • Machine (Automatic Speech Recognition) Captions
  • Professional (Human) Captions
• Ordering Machine or Professional Captions
• Editing Captions
• Downloading Captions
• Viewing, Searching, and Downloading Transcripts
• Getting Help

About Captioning

Restrictions

• Professional post-production captions can only be ordered for videos Virginia Tech users added to My Media and Media Gallery themselves. 
  • To upload the captions to a video hosting platform, follow the platform's instructions. YouTube's instructions are here: Add subtitles and captions. 
• Video owners and co-editors can order and edit captions.
  
  • Owners can delegate ordering and editing captions by adding collaborators to their media. 

Machine (Automatic Speech Recognition) Captions

For all videos uploaded to My Media, machine captions are generated using automatic speech recognition (ASR) software. Accuracy is variable, but is up to 90% accurate.

Machine captions are free for all Virginia Tech affiliates’ media. They take about 30 minutes to generate, but the exact processing time depends on video length and number of captioning requests. Captions can be edited for accuracy in My Media or Media Gallery. 

• All Zoom cloud recordings copied to My Media have automatic machine captions as of December 21, 2020.
• To learn more, see Post Production Captioning.

Professional (Human) Captions

Professional captions are human-generated and typically maintain a minimum accuracy rate of 99%.

Limited central funding is available for professional captioning of instructional materials. Centrally-funded professional captioning requests must be approved by the Accessible Technologies group in Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies. Approval takes one business day. After approval, professional captions are automatically returned within the video in five business days or fewer.

To upload videos to Kaltura, see Adding Videos to My Media. Then see Ordering Machine or Professional Captions below to learn how to submit a captioning request.

If you have issues with the Machine Captions for your video, re-upload the video to My Media, which will kick off the ASR process again.

If the original video is not available outside of My Media to re-upload, enable downloading for the video, download, then re-upload the video to My Media.

If you have videos outside of Kaltura that require professional captioning, please contact captioning@vt.edu.

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Ordering Machine or Professional Captions

All Zoom cloud recordings automatically copied to My Media, or any video uploaded by a user into My Media, will have machine (automatic speech recognition) captions. See Editing Captions to increase the accuracy of machine captions.

1. In My Media or Media Gallery, browse for the media entry and click the video thumbnail or title.
2. From the Actions drop-down, click +Caption & Enrich.
   
3. Scroll down to Service and choose Professional or Machine from the dropdown menu.
   
4. Check the Add Speaker Names box.
5. Click the Submit button.  
6. You will receive an email confirmation after you submit your request.
7. Check caption order status under Existing Requests. 
   
8. Within 5 business days, you will receive an email when your captions are ready.
9. If captioning failed, you can re-request captions.

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Editing Captions

Machine captions are generated with automatic speech recognition software and are 70-90% accurate. Video owners and co-publishers can edit captions in Kaltura's captioning editing tool.

Video owners and co-editors can order and edit captions. Owners can delegate ordering and editing captions by adding collaborators to their media. 

1. In My Media or Media Gallery, browse to the media entry and click the video thumbnail or title.
2. From the Actions drop-down, click +Caption & Enrich. You'll see a list of captions for that video under Existing Requests. 
3. Click the pencil icon next to the caption file you want to edit. The Closed Captions Editor will open. 
   
4. The Closed Captions Editor has:
   
   • The video on the right.
   • The caption edit box on the left.
   • Add speaker and search captions at the top.
     
5. To edit captions and timing, hover over the caption then click on one of the text boxes.
   
   1. Start time.
   2. End time.
   3. Edit caption.
   4. Add new caption.
   5. Delete caption.
      
6. Click Save to publish the edited captions and sync them with the video.
   
7. Refresh My Media, play the video, and check your work. 

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Downloading Captions

Captions exist in a separate SRT file and don't automatically download/upload with the associated video.

• To play a video with captions on your computer, download the video and the captions file and put it in the same folder as the video. 
• To upload a video and captions to a platform like YouTube, download the captions then follow the platform's instructions.

To download captions: 

1. Go to a video My Media or Media Gallery and click Actions, then Edit. 
2. Click the Captions tab. 
3. Next to the captions file, click the download icon.
   
4. To play the video and captions on your computer, put the captions file in the same folder as the video.

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Viewing, Searching, and Downloading Transcripts

• Captions appear on screen and are synced with the video.
• Transcripts have the same words, but in a separate, searchable document. 

1. From My Media or Media Gallery, click a video thumbnail or title to go to the video.
2. Click play to start your video.
3. You will now see the Show Transcript button in the upper right hand corner of the video player. Click on the button to open your transcript.
   
4. Search your transcripts by entering a key term in the Search in Transcript box to find where in the video the term appears.
   
5. To download your transcripts, click on the three dots.
   
6. Then click Download transcript and save the transcript to your computer.
   

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Getting Help

For instructions on resolving common issues with Kaltura, please click on the guide for your role: 

• Video Content Management - Troubleshooting My Media and Media Gallery (for Instructors)
• Video Content Management - Troubleshooting My Media and Media Gallery (for Students)

If you need help with My Media, Media Gallery, or Kaltura in general:

• Search for topics in the Kaltura Knowledge Base. 
• See the Kaltura Video App for Canvas User Guide.

If you still have questions: 

• For Kaltura in Canvas or at video.vt.edu, go to the 4Help Portal, log in, and click Get Help. Specify where you are having the issue and include the video name, ID, and/or URL if applicable.
• For questions about intellectual property, contact your department chair or the University Council. 

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