Forum Discussion
New in Storyline 360: Customize Closed Captions
Have you ever added closed captions only to realize they're covering up important slide content? Or maybe you wanted to change the colors to fit your brand guidelines? If so, you're in luck! With two cool new features, you can now choose the color and placement of your captions. That way, you can ensure all learners can access video content without hiding essential information or compromising design.
Ready to customize your captions? In the player properties window, select Colors & Effects on the ribbon, then choose your color and placement preferences. It’s that easy! Plus, in the same window, you get a glimpse into how your captions will display to learners.
And that’s not all! We also reorganized the player properties window into two sections—player and closed captions—so selecting the options you need is easier than ever.
Articulate 360 subscribers can access these features immediately. If you don't have Articulate 360, start a free 30-day trial. Learn more about these features and closed captions in Storyline 360 by checking out these resources:
A quick add to that. The videos are mostly 30 s to 1minute. But there may be a 20 minute one later.
Thanks for that scott. No idea about greyed out either. I would also use vimeo but the client does not want their customers to link to another URL from their website. Vimeo or youtube would ideally be better but it without links to 3rd party platforms.
Hello everyone,
I've been following this discussion with great interest. I'm currently using VTT files for closed captions in my videos, but I have two key requirements that are essential for me:
1. Multilingual Support: I need the ability to offer captions in multiple languages.
2. Automatic Captions: I want the captions to start automatically as soon as the video begins.Currently, my workflow involves creating VTT files in English, then translating them into Spanish and French separately using AI, resaving them as _es.vtt and __fr.vtt.
I duplicate the video 2 more times, each with its corresponding caption language, allowing users to select their preferred language via an icon (as the videos as lightslides). While this approach works, it's extra effort that I’d prefer to streamline.
Ideally, the features I require are:
1. A single video where viewers can choose their caption language without having to create multiple versions of the video.
2. Automatic captions that start as soon as the video plays, ensuring that users immediately have access to translations in their chosen language.Thanks in advance for any other insights, or when these cc features would be adapted (Storyline 360)
Hey Carol.
Not sure why your response is greyed out and say reported. But hopefully you get this reply. I would upload your video to Vimeo and embed it onto your Storyline slide. Vimeo let's you add multiple caption files in SRT and VTT formats. And more recently, Vimeo now supports multiple audio tracks which might be an option.
I always use Vimeo to embed long videos so that the Storyline file size remains small.
It works for me when you have the SRT and audio file the same name and import the audio using the media library. But it only imports the captions when you physically add the audio to a slide. It's a bit quirky, so it's as if it doesn't import to the media library at first. See if that works for you.
Unfortunately that would still be an entirely manual (and potentially more
cumbersome) process. I will try that for smaller projects though, thanks.
In these cases the audio already exists on the slide and I am adding
captions after the fact. I have many projects I am inheriting like this
where I am updating accessibility and it’s terriby tedious.Ah yeah, if it's after the fact then I don't think it's possible. 😔 I've had this problem before which is why I now make sure all captions are ready before importing into the media library.
Any way to mass import closed captions? I have tried the method where it says to import a media file with a .srt in the same directory with the same name but that doesn't seem to work for mp3s?
I have 93 audio clips that already existed in a project without closed captions, have created both .srt and .vtt files for those clips, named the same as the audio file (e.g. layer1.mp3, layer1.srt, and layer1.vtt all in the same directory) and now want to mass import the captions. I have tried re-importing the audio files into the project but that doesn't seem to work.
Currently, my process will need to be a total of 279 clicks (3 clicks per file) plus the 5-10 second lag time needed to insert a single caption. I feel this should be able to be done in an easier way.Customization? That's music to my ears. This level of customization can greatly enhance the overall viewing experience and maintain the brand's identity across different media platforms. I'll use this on my next project!
This is a nice addition, thanks! I'd like to know if there's a way to force closed captions to be switched on by default in the player? Right now, with the CC option available in the player, the learner has to click it to switch them on
Hi Scott, did someone answer you yet? There is a project variable that is called "Player.DisplayCaptions". To turn the CC on, you can set a trigger on the very first slide of your project that changes the variable "Player.DisplayCaptions" to "true" :)
Thanks very much - I'll give that a go today!
Looking at it close up, this is what CC looks like now. It's extremely inaccessible.
Agree to all of the above - but I'd also like to see that simply adding a comma to the text-to-speech doesn't completely mess up the rest of the caption alignments. HUGE waste of time!
I used to be able to import captions simultaneously with the video by making sure both files had the same name. But now, after this update with the caption formatting, I have to import the close caption file after inserting the video. Has anyone else noticed this? Or having this problem?
