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How to Get Video Subtitles Online Without the Hassle: 3 Simple Steps

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RevBlogSubtitlesHow to Get Video Subtitles Online Without the Hassle: 3 Simple Steps

Video subtitles are an important content detail that should be included whenever possible. Online video subtitles and captions can improve the experience for all kinds of viewers–not just non-English speakers or the hard of hearing.

Unfortunately, too many video producers skip the important step of adding subtitles. They may assume it’s difficult to do, or they aren’t aware of the many, many benefits they could gain. 

If your company produces video content, consider adding subtitles to your online videos. Plus, if you outsource the transcription process, this can help you avoid frustration or extra time spent by your team. Read on to learn just how easy it is to get subtitles online.

The Easiest Way to Get Subtitles Online

Fortunately, those setbacks we mentioned are all avoidable! With a great online video subtitle and captioning service, anyone who produces videos can prevent these obstacles, keep costs down, improve video quality, and reap the benefits of video subtitles–all at the same time. 

Professional translators can interpret dialogue correctly and better understand how to avoid common errors caused by a more casual translation. Trained professionals can help you avoid embarrassing mistakes from an incorrectly subtitled video.

Pro: Get Subtitles Online From Rev

With Rev, ordering subtitles couldn’t be easier.

  1. Either upload an English-language video file or paste a video URL from YouTube or Vimeo on Rev’s platform.
  2. Rev’s professionals take over and work on the captions.
  3. You receive an email file with captions that you can easily view and edit, and publish to your platform of choice.

Want Rev to add captions & subtitles to your video for you? 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!

open captions

See the full list of languages here, or contact us to request a language you don’t see on the list. 

Our file formats include caption files, including text and timing, for all popular platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon. Caption formats include SubRip (.srt), Scenarist (.scc), WebVTT (.vtt), and many more. Go to our subtitles page to see the full list!

Plus, there’s no commitment necessary! Send us your one-time project, or trust us with multiple or repeat orders. 

The Drawbacks of Creating Subtitles Yourself

Many companies avoid adding video subtitles online because they believe it’s too expensive or time-consuming to do so. In fact, the drawbacks of not having video subtitles online can be even more costly than the additional step of adding subtitles.

When you try to add video subtitles yourself rather than choosing an online service, this can create a few additional difficulties: 

Con: Team Frustration

When a company decides to add their own video subtitles, it can be a time-consuming, frustrating process for the unlucky team member chosen to do it. You have to decide which language or languages to offer subtitles in, and the subtitler has to follow the pacing of the video to make sure the subtitles appear at just the right place, and for the right length of time.

This can be especially frustrating to someone who is inexperienced with subtitles or who is not familiar with one of the languages, especially if dealing with video captions is not part of their job description!

When you order subtitles online, this not only keeps your team from getting frustrated with their daily responsibilities (or by having to create subtitles instead of fulfilling their normal responsibilities), but it’s also less expensive than hiring a full-time subtitle writer. 

Con: Too Many Hours Spent on Subtitles

It can potentially take hours to create an accurate, complete subtitle file for any video. Of course, part of this will depend on the length of the video itself, and the language you’re working with for the subtitles.

It takes five times the length of the video to add subtitles or captions.

Generally, it takes at least five times the length of the video to add subtitles or captions! This means if you have a 15-minute video, you’re looking at nearly an hour and a half just creating subtitles. And that’s assuming that the video stays on-schedule, with no other tasks competing for your team’s attention.

If you have an even longer video, or multiple videos, those minutes and hours quickly add up. Add even more time if your video’s audio is lower quality, or there are multiple speakers with different accents. Do you, your team members, and your organization have time to subtitle all that?

When you let the professionals handle your video subtitles, it reduces hassle for your team and keeps content production on schedule.

Con: Potentially Poor Video Subtitles

Unless you have a subtitle or language expert on your team, you may not be producing the most high-quality subtitles for your videos. All too often, no subtitles are better than bad subtitles.

Unless you (or a team member) are bilingual and have plenty of spare time, you will need to take certain steps to get your subtitle files. You might produce a captions file for your video and then use a translation tool to translate the captions into subtitles in the language you need. However, this is highly unlikely to produce the most accurate subtitles.

If you have a tight budget, you might be tempted to go with a free or low-cost subtitle service, either human- or computer-generated. Unfortunately, this can also have some drawbacks. Like with many other things, this is a major case of “you get what you pay for.” 

No subtitles are better than bad subtitles.

Non-professional individuals may be less motivated to perform quality work. Speech-recognition software may not recognize more subtle details in the audio and may be limited in their languages, video length, or file formats, compared to more professional services.

People use subtitles on videos for a variety of different reasons:

  • It helps them understand the video better
  • They are learning the language the video is in
  • They don’t understand the spoken language or have hearing difficulties

With the right subtitle service, you are guaranteed to get accurate subtitles that will only add to the video viewing experience.

The Difference an Expert Makes When You Get Subtitles Online

But what makes subtitles so important? We’ve mentioned that high-quality video subtitles bring many benefits, but what are those specific benefits?

1. Video Subtitles Increase Your Reach and Views

Adding subtitles to video online can increase your video view time by more than 12%. By following the subtitles, more people will watch your videos for a longer period of time.

Viewers often watch online videos without sound, especially on mobile devices without headphones. Public transportation, noisy cafes, or quiet libraries are all places where most people would be unable to watch video with sound. By adding subtitles, mobile users can more easily watch your video on the go.

The more people watch your video with online subtitles, the more likely they are to share it with a friend or colleague, even if they never actually hear it. This is only possible if you add subtitles to video online. When your online video has no subtitles, viewers who can’t listen to it are less likely to share it.

2. Video Subtitles Boost Video Engagement

When viewers share your video via email or social media, they may use a quote from the video. It’s easier to remember the best quotes when they appear on the screen in the form of subtitles. This keeps users from having to keep going back and hit play, rewind, and pause to make sure they find the right part.

Videos with subtitles also tend to have more comments, since the audience is more likely to express interest or ask follow-up questions if you’ve captured their interest and increased their understanding by captioning your videos.

3. Adding Subtitles Improves SEO

Did you know that adding subtitles improve your video’s position in search engine results? Ever since Google purchased the video platform YouTube, it has been working to integrate it into its search system. As part of Google’s search engine, YouTube videos rank in Google searches for topics and keywords.

Search engines, including Google, cannot “crawl” video and images like they can with text. Having subtitles provides the text that search engines need to rank your video in their results. Video subtitles essentially act as a blog post within your video that tells Google what the video is about, and whether it matches the terms people may search for.

You can reap these benefits, and more, when you elevate your video by including subtitles provided by experts like Rev

Get Your Video Subtitles Online Today

Ready to add subtitles to your online videos? Check out Rev’s subtitle services to learn more about how we can help increase your video’s value without the hassle.

Try us out today and add subtitles to an online video!

Affordable, fast transcription. 100% Guaranteed.