Closed Caption for videos
PowerPoint allows you to add closed captioning (CC) to a video file and this plays when you watch a video in the native PPT file (insert a video on a slide to play as part of your lesson) - but when you publish to create the elearning file via iSpring, you lose the closed captioning ability in the video. This would be a HUGE win for iSpring to enable this feature, that already works within PowerPoint, to work in an elearning course and resolves a major ADA compliance point. Have asked about this multiple times the last couple of years, especially once PPT enabled this ability and it became a native function to the application. Anyone else see this is a big benefit to e-learning publishing? I love the iSpring tool, but struggle with this one. Otherwise I have to make multiple versions of the video and make learning paths in the course to select English video, English video with CC, English video with Spanish CC or Spanish video with Spanish CC. Would LOVE to see this work with controls in iSpring!
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I too have had a request to start using Closed Captions and I can see the PPT version works well, but the iSpring Player does not like this method. The menu option exists, but does nothing.
I even tried the embedded object route using a short html file, again the player does not produce the results we need.From a non coding backround, all ispirng needs is to recognise the *.vtt file and embed that with the slide into the player, or have it as a hidden resource.
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Are you talking about true closed captioning where it converts the audio somehow to text in a box or field? That would be awesome if so. I have published our CBT courses with Ispring to the Ispring Learn LMS using that option to show "closed captioning" at the bottom which is basically the slide notes field. That works fine, but then you have to provide all the text in the notes section for every slide to have that appear. The one bad part about that is that field kind of covers up the bottom of your display screen and can block visibility to whatever is goiing on down there.
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mark wong No, I am talking about using *.vtt files as the transcript for the closed captions, not using the Notes section of the ppt or the iSpring player.
It turns out, with help from Polly on iSpring support and testing with my team, that Close Captions do work correctly.
Using the *.vtt file you then gain the closed captions ability to be switched on and off from the video player.
One consideration is that we noticed that the VTT file needs to use "periods" for the time stamp marker and not a "comma" as Camtasia produce when I was creating the initial transcript for my project.
Then the second consideration, you will see the closed captions in a produced video, but not in a "Published" ispring project, if that project is publish on your local machine. Publish to a test web site and everything work ok. We have tested this on our own LMS test bed.
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Steve Searle Hi Steve, is this working for you when you publish as a SCORM course? This is what I am trying to accomplish. PowerPoint allows you to add a VTT file and have the video you place on a slide toggle with and without closed captioning.... reading the VTT file and showing the appropriate text along with the video, as proper closed captioning does. When I save this as a SCORM course, however, I lose this capability. I know iSpring allows you to create their version of Closed Captioning - which essentially just has you copy all of the text from the video script to put in a box on the screen... but it is clunky and puts all of the text up at once and a student would have to scroll and read all of this - and it does not correspond to the video. I do not need it to work to save as a video - as it is a video that I am inserting on to the slide to begin with, so I am not saving as a video (and have not tried that so not sure if that works or not... it sounds like maybe for you that works?) But what I would LOVE to see is the ability for iSpring to preserve this PowerPoint functionality of being able to include a VTT (or SRT) file and maybe even allow the CC button to work with the video player to toggle the Closed Captioning on and off on the video player..... though even if a student had to click on the video to get this control, I could live with that as well. If you are finding a way to do this and publish as a SCORM course - I would love to hear how you are doing that! It is just frustrating that other tools allow for proper closed captioning in video - and even PowerPoint now provides for it, but it seems to get lost when you publish the slides as a course.
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Kevin M I think I understand what you are looking for and I do believe that what we have achieved is the route you would need to take.
My process is as follows for our standards:
1. We must have all the audio voice over for our slides in the Notes section of the ppt files so that these can be read in conjunction with the slide as a learner uses the course. In this respect, we cannot use the Notes to generate the closed captions. As you say, a user would need to scroll too much and this would be pointless.
2. I use Camtasia to create all my videos and it has the capabilities to allow you to write the transcript of the voice over and save directly as a vtt file.
3. I had to alter all commas to "full stops" "periods" depending on where you live :) in the vtt file so that it produced the correct format that we found iSpring likes.
4. In the ppt, on the actual video, use the Playback tab to add the vtt file to the video. This will display the closed captions within your presentation and you will also gain the cc on/off button.
5. Now the hard bit, if you preview your project in iSpring, you may see the closed captions, I tired a few times, sometimes I saw them, sometimes not and I think this may have been the format of comma v period that may have been the issue in iSprring.
6. Hard bit pt2, when you now publish your project, we use Scorm 1.2, everything is published correctly, BUT (in big letters) , if you then view your project as a local save you will NOT see the closed captions. For some reason the only way to see them is to publish to your live or test site, this was the little thing that the iSpring support team found out for me during my case.
7. We have placed our test project on our testing platform and it works perfectly.
Hope this helps people.
Steve
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Hi Steve - thank you for this very detailed guidance! We will try this and see if we can replicate your results! I really appreciate this as this has been a real pain-point for us. We use a lot of video and audio, in our courses. As you mention, putting the text in the notes and surfacing these with the iSpring CC button is not effective. What we have had to do instead is create alternate tracks for some programs, or complete separate versions in some cases. We would create a slide in the beginning of the program that offered three buttons: English Video, English Video with English CC, English Video with Spanish CC (and in some cases Spanish Video and Spanish with Spanish CC), to toggle the user down the corresponding path - although once selected, the selection is essentially locked in, versus the ability to turn the option on and off. As you can imagine this is very cumbersome, and it adds a whole layer to building the courses. For longer courses, we've just had to make separate versions - again, also very cumbersome as there really should be an easier way and if we had just built these in PPT, we would have the ability - it just seems to get lost once you publish in iSpring. I am looking forward to trying this solution to see how it works! It does sound like there could still be a cleaner way to manage this if iSpring could sync up the CC capability to work with VTT or SRT files as they are typically designed, but even a work around for now would be a good thing. Thank you and have a great week!
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Kevin M Hello. Curious as to whether this worked for you. I have tried several ways over the past few days and am at a loss. Hoping to find a solution ASAP.
Thanks!
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