The Best 3rd Party Closed Captioning Service for Zoom

While video conferencing has existed for more than 60 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced it to become an everyday necessity. Companies and educational institutions looking to host virtual meetings and conferences primarily took to Zoom to stay connected using video calls. Zoom’s easy-to-use platform is ideal for individuals who are searching for simple ways to connect online. However, a crucial feature the conferencing platform currently lacks is live captioning.

Live captioning transcribes speech into on-screen text in real-time. It offers accessibility – no matter where a viewer is located – and further provides inclusion to foreign-language speakers and individuals who have hearing impairments. A study also found that 80% of people who use captions in general do not have difficulty hearing, which suggests that it could be beneficial for a large subset of users. Furthermore, 98.6% of higher education students benefited from captions, as it helped with focusing, retaining information, and understanding videos or meetings with poor audio quality.

Rev Zoom Live Captions

Although Zoom supports a few third party captioning services, Rev Zoom Live Captions was found to be the best solution among its competitors. Through leveraging artificial intelligence, Rev’s speech recognition engine processes live video and audio for captioning within minutes. The output exceeds 80% accuracy, and the system has bested those of tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

Our live captions, as well as closed captions, improve accessibility, comprehension, engagement, and retention for clients. Live captions help increase engagement and assist employees in focusing on what is being said in meetings and webinars. Captions also keep students engaged and help boost their literacy skills, such as word recognition and general vocabulary. 

How to Add Rev Live Captions to Zoom Meetings

Rev Live Captions for Zoom is easy to install and allows participants to view precise, real-time captions during Zoom meetings. To get started, visit Rev’s live caption webpage, click “Start Free Trial,” and then press the “Authorize in Zoom” button to connect your Zoom and Rev accounts. In order to complete the authorization, you will need to sign into a Zoom admin account.

Once the connection is authorized, select “Start Your Free Trial” in Zoom to use Rev Live Captions. Then, in the checkout window, input the number of Zoom host users that your organization needs.

When the checkout process is completed, add the Zoom host users with their email address in Rev. The users will need to update their Zoom meeting settings to allow Rev Live Captions. Once updated, an indicator at the top left of the Zoom meeting screen will read, “LIVE on Rev Live Captions,” and a closed captioning button will appear on the bottom control bar of your screen. For closed captions to emerge on your screen, select “Show Subtitle” by clicking the up arrow on the right of the closed captions button.

How to Order Rev’s Closed Captions for Zoom Recordings

Rev also caters to individuals who are searching to share recordings of their Zoom meeting with subtitles. Rev’s closed captions are 99% accurate and completed by a team of 50,000 professionals who are available to transcribe 24/7. Depending on the video file length, recordings with closed captions will be returned within 12 hours.

To order the closed captioning file, record and save the meeting from the third party window. Then visit Rev’s closed captioning page, click “Get Started,” upload the Zoom video recording, and hit “Checkout.” Once our professional transcribers caption the video, it can then be downloaded and shared in various formats.   

In a world where more meetings are hosted virtually, it is crucial to have accessible conferences that enhance the user experience to keep participants engaged. All of this is possible by adding captions to your videos. For $20 a month for live captions, or $1.25 per video minute for closed captions, Rev’s services help you get your message across clearly to audiences.