Alternate Media Center

Captioning Digital Video

Warning! "This page includes  links will take you to sites outside the Cuesta College web server. Cuesta College has no control over the content or availability of these sites."

If you would like to learn how to add closed captions or audio captions to digital video files, please contact us, sign up for the Digital Captioning flex activity, or visit the MAGpie website.

To view a captioned video online, please make sure you have captions turned on in your Windows Media Player or Real Player, or that you have QuickTime version 4 or later.

To request that the Alternate Media Center add captions to a videotape or a digital video file, please fill out the closed captioning request form.

Listen to and view a video with both audio and closed captions:

View educational video SpaceTime in Real Player.

To download a video viewing program, follow one of these links:

• Quick Time

• Real Player

• Windows Media Player

Streaming Video and other ways to access your captioned videos.

Are you ready to display your captioned files over the Internet? There are 2 options; first, you can include a link on your web page, which will stream the video to the user. Second, you can include a link that will allow users to download a zip archive of the files. The user then unzips the files and opens the appropriate file in the correct application.

Let's begin with streaming video. There are several ways to stream video; most require expensive software or dedicated servers. So here we will cover the simplest and least time consuming method - putting a link on a web page and using a ram file to stream a Real Player formatted video with captions.

I'll assume you already know how to create web pages, and that you are familiar with the convention of putting your pictures in the "images" folder of your web site. We begin by creating a new folder called "movies". Inside the "movies" folder, we put the necessary files, including the video (*.mpeg or *.avi), the captioning file (*.smi or *.smil), the text file (*.real.rt), any necessary audio tracks (*.wav) and the ram file (*.ram). I prefer to create a subfolder for each individual movie, that way it is easier to determine which files go together at a later time.

The ram file is a very small text file you create in notepad. The text of the file is simply: file://filename.real.smi , where filename is the name of your file.

In your HTML code, you link to this ram file using code such as:

Now, upload your web page and your movies folder to your web server, and your videos are available for everyone to see and hear.

If you prefer to use Quick Time movies (*.mov) or Windows Media Format, this method of streaming video won't work. There are software conversion tools, but they tend to cost money. So you might want to consider creating a zip archive of the necessary files and allowing people to download it. Make sure you include a readme.txt or readme.doc file with instructions for viewing the captioned video!

Now a simple link to the zip file is all you need. There are several shareware programs available which can zip up files, including WinZip (www.winzip.com) and Aladin Expander (www.aladdinsys.com).

Return to Top

Page maintained by dspsweb@cuesta.edu. Last modified: July 3, 2007.