How to Add Automatic Captions on Instagram IGTV

Are you a video creator on Instagram IGTV? You probably heard that on September 2020 the platform has implemented automatic subtitling.

This feature is obviously good news for improving the experience you can bring to your audience. Adding captions to your IGTV videos increases the interactivity and understanding of your content to a wider audience.

But while the in-app automatic solution is reliable for occasional video projects, it is not always the best fit. In fact, there are others, more professional ways to subtitle for bigger workload.

That's why we're going to show you how to use IGTV's automatic subtitling, as well as other more professional solutions to do the job better. Hang tight!

Why add captions to your Instagram videos?

As a service added by Instagram to enhance the video format and compete with YouTube and Snapchat, IGTV has enabled Instagrammers to publish relatively long videos to their subscribers.

While it has taken time to be adopted by Instagram players, the addition of an IGTV preview in the native Instagram feed has broadened its success.

It is now widely used by the media, major influencers and brands to increase interaction with their audience or provide more elaborate information.

AS such, by adding in September 2020 an automatic subtitling solution as on Facebook and Facebook Live, Instagram wanted to give them even more ways to make their content more engaging.

But what exactly is the point of adding subtitles? Here are 3 key reasons:

• Readable subtitles in your content grab the viewer's attention better and keep them to watch until the end.
• Your audience can consume your videos without sound, while Instagram users often consume content on the go (in the subway, at work…).
• You make your content accessible to a deaf and hard of hearing audience, which is a significant portion of Instagram's audience.

Instagram automatic subtitles: the step-by-step method

Actually, to be honest, the process of adding subtitles to your IGTV content is quite simple:

• Record your video with the IGTV camera application or another camera application on Android or App Store. In the latter case, select the video you want to publish on the application.
• After editing your video, press "Next" and click on "Advanced Settings".
• You can then enable automatic subtitling of your video, just like on YouTube.

To explain a little more the technology, the subtitles are added to the video afterwards and analyze speech thanks to a voice recognition technology. It appears automatically on the IGTV video player.

But while this technology is quite effective, it can sometimes seriously lack accuracy. In addition, you cannot edit subtitles and customize their style, and the choice of available languages is rather small. For this reason, we do not recommend it for professional or larger volume projects.

Instead, we'll show you other solutions that provide better accessibility to your content.

IGTV Professional subtitles: Checksub

Why use an automatic subtitling solution ?

As we've said, there are other, more effective ways to get better quality subtitles. The automatic subtitling solutions available on the market are especially based on technologies and workflow that manage more professionally this type of project. These include solutions like Authôt.com, Rev.com…

Here, we will show you the procedure to follow for our tool, Checksub subtitle generator.

Why use Checksub? Because it provides features more adapted to video creators:

• An advanced voice recognition and automatic translation API to analyze your video, including 128 different languages available.
• A powerful and easy-to-use online subtitle editor
• A collaborative platform for working with translators, clients and other partners

Using Checksub for your IGTV video project is a bit more complex, but it's worth the effort. You'll see!

How to use an automatic subtitling solution?

1# Import your content

To start, log in on the Cheksub platform. By registering, you will have direct access to the upload interface of your video. Select your content and indicate its original language. You can also choose between many languages to make the translation if needed.

The API will then proceed with the speech recognition and provide you with the result in a few minutes.

2# Check and adapt the result

When the result is ready, you can then click on the language and check the synchronization of your subtitles to your video.

Here are a few tips to do it properly:

• It is often more efficient to share your text in sentences. Go to the parameter button for "split my text by sentence".
• Try to arrange your text sequences at the exact moment the speaker starts speaking. If speakers speak fast, you can try to remove a few words but not the beginning or ending words.
• Always display characters when the speaker's lips move (important for those who read with their lips)
• Make sure to display a subtitle at the beginning of a scene and remove it at the end of the scene
• Check several times the synchronization and the fluidity of your subtitles.

3# Encode your subtitles and export your video to IGTV

When you have an optimal result, you can then confirm your work. To make it easy for your audience to benefit from subtitles, you need to embed subtitles in your video. To do this, simply press the "Export" button, then "video export".

You can then customize the appearance of your subtitles (font, colors, size…), before they are encoded in your video.

Here again, some tips :

• The optimal positioning of the subtitles is in the center and at the bottom. Checksub's default settings take this into account.
• Avoid using strong colors such as red or yellow. Instead, use white and black.
• The size of the subtitles must be adjusted to the size of the mobile screens. To keep it simple, don't make them too big (5% of the screen size at most).
• If you don't necessarily want to differentiate yourself, we'll advise you to go for classics like Roboto, Tiresias, Times New Roman. If you want a little more originality, here's a complete guide to the best subtitle fonts.

Then all you have to do is take the video and download it to your IGTV application.

Now you know the way to get professional subtitles for your IGTV content. We hope it'll help you impress your audience with quality content!

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