Are you looking to grow your viewers on Twitch? Or have you ever wondered how to make your Twitch content more accessible? Consider adding subtitles to your recordings to accomplish both.

Subtitles are becoming a vital component of live streaming. Not only are they a great way to make your content more inclusive, but they also attract a broader audience to your videos. To clarify quickly, closed captions are the text version of words spoken on a screen for video and television. Subtitles are those same words translated into a different language than what’s spoken in the video. We will use these terms interchangeably throughout this article.

Your fans can turn on closed captions if they don’t want to stream the sound in a particular location. They’re useful when studying at the library, at work, or anywhere they want to sneak in some game time but with no sound.

How to Add Closed Captions & Subtitles to Twitch Recordings

You might want to post your Twitch videos to your social accounts, YouTube, or anywhere else on the web that allows really professional & accurate closed caption files to be included.

Captions on these recordings are great for a lot of reasons, including video SEO & helping people with hearing disabilities. It’s also interesting to note over 80 percent of Facebook videos are watched without sound.

Here are the steps for adding professional captions to your Twitch recordings:

1. Record your Twitch stream

Start by recording your Twitch stream so you can get a video file, or can upload your video to a platform like YouTube . Twitch has a great help article for recording your stream and so does WikiHow.

2. Upload your video recording to Rev, or use the YouTube integration

Go here to upload your video recording. If you’ve already added your video online, you can also paste your video URL. Another option is to sync your YouTube or Vimeo account with Rev’s integration so you can order closed captions straight from videos already in your account.

3. Checkout, and Rev’s huge network professional captioners will get to work

You’ll receive your 99% accurate caption file in about 12-24 hours, depending on the video length. Rev closed captions are only $1.99 per video minute.

4. Add your caption file to your Twitch video

Rev gives you the choice of several caption file formats to download. The most popular are SRT (.srt) and WebVTT (.vtt). Here are some helpful articles for adding your caption files to videos in several social media platforms & video editing tools:

• YouTube – How to Add Closed Captions to YouTube highlights Rev’s automatic YouTube integration for the easiest possible YouTube solution.
• Vimeo – Learn about How to Add Captions to Vimeo videos
• Twitter – Twitter Media studio works well with SRT files, learn how to add captions to Twitter videos here.
• Facebook – Add captions to Facebook videos using our article here.
• Adobe Premiere Pro – Adding Captions in Adobe Premiere Pro
• Instagram – Social media captions are as important as ever – learn how to Add Captions to Instagram Videos
• Final Cut Pro – A popular tool for Mac users, see How to Add Captions and Subtitles to Final Cut Pro
• Handbrake (free video editor option) – Handbrake is a great option for adding subtitle or caption files to video if you don’t want to pay for Final Cut or Premiere: Add Caption or Subtitle Files to Videos with Handbrake

Prefer to have captions added straight to your Twitch recordings? Rev now offers burned-in captions (open captions). Just check the “burned-in captions” box at checkout and you’ll receive a video with permanent, hard-coded captions added straight to your videos. Also available for foreign language subtitles!

That’s it! Your closed captions will be shown on your video when enabled.

How to Add Captions to Live Streams

For live streams, caption files must transmit into an accepted format that will embed inside your stream, or alongside them. You must use a broadcast encoder to do this. Twitch accepts captions inline 21 CEA-708/EIA-608 format and in CC1 NTSC field 1.

For example, adding live captions is easy using a program called OBS (Open Broadcaster Software). There are various OBS Software programs out there such as OBS Studio, Stream Labs OBS, and Xsplit. And, there’s Twitch.tv.

You can also use PubNub for live captions. Go to PubNub and click the developer tab to see how to place subtitles on your Twitch Video’s. Here is where you can add subtitles to Twitch videos. It’s a program that listens to your voice when speaking on the microphone on the computer. Note that this isn’t nearly as accurate as professional captioning services.

Give a thumbs-up to closed captions and start getting more followers on Twitch.

The Benefits of Closed Captions for Streamers

When enabling closed captions on Twitch, video creators have an opportunity to broaden their audience to include people with disabilities and attract more followers.

Using subtitles to share native languages increases worldwide viewership to your channel. Open Captions are always visible on screen. Viewers can turn off closed captions at any time.

Getting discovered in search is essential to growing your following, and captions increase discoverability. Essentially, closed captions are the metadata that helps videos rank in Google. Metadata is crucial for advanced search filtering and is useful in data analytics. For this reason, if you are monitoring engagement with your audience, closed captions are a must-have.

Without closed captions, it’s a sure bet you may lose viewers and subscribers. People can interact with your text which lends a big hand in making your brand more popular. In fact, videos without subtitles are watched 66% to completion, while videos with subtitles are watched 91% to completion. That’s quite a difference!

You want the visitor to stay on your video as long as possible. This is known as dwell time (time spent on a page to consume most of the content.) Closed captions on Twitch are necessary because the visitor is less likely to return to another page. Amazingly, this engagement time drastically increases page rankings.

Why You Should Stream On Twitch

Twitch is the largest and oldest live streaming platform around. They have a massive following of extremely dedicated users.

Twitch is a destination for well-known gamers such as Michael Grzesiek aka Shroud, and Jaryd Lazar, aka summit1g. Secondly, it’s the premier website for video streamers to gain an audience and earn revenue.

Twitch is not just for watching video games. There are communities for music, food, creatives, digital illustration, podcasts, movie reviews, and more. With more choices for spectators and creators, you can easily start a Twitch channel and develop a larger fan base.

Interesting Facts about Twitch

Undoubtedly, Twitch is the king of live stream gaming. Gamers flock to the site to interact with other gamers and improve their gaming skills by watching live screens of other broadcasters. Being able to watch live unpredictable experiences is what makes Twitch so exciting to be a part of.

Amazon acquired the video game streaming company for $1 billion in 2014. With so many cord-cutters choosing streaming over traditional cable, Twitch has over a 75 percent dominance for live stream gaming.

• The average age for its core audience is about 21 years old.
• 81.5% of Twitch users are male.
• The niche platform has a loyal fan base. Twitch has 3.7 million streams per month and 49,400 live channels.
• 35% of users are on mobile.
• 71% of Twitch’s users are millennials.
• The average time spent viewing Twitch is 95 minutes.
• 2.7 billion hours views on Twitch the first quarter of 2019.
• Similar Web reports 20.62% users are from the United States.
• The most popular game on Twitch in 2019 is Fortnite.

Monetizing Your Twitch Account

Here are some ways Twitch streamers can earn money:

• Revenue share for streamers from ads.
• Selling merchandise through the Twitch Partnership Program.
• Offering subscriptions to your channel.
• Affiliate sales.
• Become a Esports Pro and compete in tournaments.
• Don’t be shy, ask viewers for donations.
• Create Bits (online currency). A viewer can cheer up 1,000 bits that worth $10.00. You can earn Bits by watching ads or buying an Amazon Gift card. Increase subscribers to 500 and you are eligible to become a Twitch Partner.

Make it a point to interact with your viewers. Thank them for their contributions, cheers viewers, and engage with the audience.