Kaltura (Captioning) - Manually Requesting Machine Captions

The University of Wisconsin System (except for UW Madison) instance of Kaltura automatically provides machine generated captions at no charge for all videos added to Kaltura after December 1, 2021. For videos added to the UW System instance of Kaltura before this date or videos whose captions have been deleted, the video owner or co-editor can manually request that machine-generated captions be added.

Accuracy and Editing

Kaltura auto captions are meant for general use and are, on average, approximately 90 percent accurate.  While video authors are encouraged to edit their video captions to correct errors for accuracy, there is no expectation that correcting auto captions for general use is required.  

For more information on editing captions, see the Kaltura (Captioning) - Editing Captions guide.

If captions are needed to fulfill a reasonable accommodation for disability-related access, please follow the established process on your campus to ensure your video captions are accurate and meet Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements. 

Requesting Machine Captions

Here is how a video owner or co-editor can request machine-generated captions for a Kaltura video:

1) Go to Kaltura's "My Media"

1a) In Canvas, go to Canvas > Account > My Media. 
1b) In Mediaspace, go to Guest > Login, then [Your Name] > My Media.

Your Name, then My Media.

2) On the My Media list, check the box next to one or more videos you'd like to caption.

3) Click the Actions drop-down menu near the top right of the screen, then select Caption & Enrich.

Kaltura's Actions menu, with the "Caption and Enrich" option highlighted.

4) Under Order Captions, select:
  • Service: Machine
  • Source Media Language: English [or other language, as needed]
  • Feature: Captions.

Order Captions menu, with Service: Machine, Source Media Language: English, and Feature: Captions selected.

5) Click Submit.

The resulting screen will show you all of your previous captions requests for that video. You can get back to this Captions Requests screen by going to Actions > Caption & Enrich.

Captions Requests screen table with one Pending request.

6) The time needed for Kaltura to generate the captions may vary from several minutes to several hours. 

When the captions are ready, the "CC" button to turn on caption display will automatically appear in the video player anywhere that the video is embedded or posted (even existing embeds or shares). At this point, users watching the video will have the option to display the captions, with no further action from the video owner needed.

Kaltura video player showing the display of captions in a video. The Closed Caption button is hightlighted.

7) We recommend that the video owner or co-editor edit the new captions in order to improve their quality.

See Also:



Keywords:captioning, caption, kaltura, video, media, accessibility, 508, transcript   Doc ID:114781
Owner:Thomas A.Group:UW System Administration DLE
Created:2021-11-10 13:46 CDTUpdated:2021-11-11 10:11 CDT
Sites:UW Green Bay, UW Platteville, UW Stout, UW System Administration DLE, UW-La Crosse
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