With half of Americans watching videos on mute, adding subtitles or automated closed captions can help your content stand out. Fortunately, it’s easy to do with the right subtitle software. Many video editing programs can burn subtitles into your footage. However, these programs require you to have an SRT file on hand before the subtitles can be created.
They Help You Reach a Wider Audience
There are around 7000 languages spoken worldwide, and subtitles can help you reach people from all over. They can also make your video more engaging for viewers from different backgrounds by translating the dialogue into their language. According to a survey, 69% of individuals view movies in public spaces without sound, and 80% will continue watching a video with subtitles.
People prefer reading to listening and find it easier to follow a video when subtitles are present. Subtitles can be opened or closed and show on-screen text to communicate audio from the original soundtrack of a video in real time. They can be in the same language as the audio or a different one and are usually designed for audiences who need to speak the language being used in the video. And, they can also include other sound effects unrelated to the dialogue, such as coughs, music, door slams, or thunderstorms.
They Help You Reach a Wider Audience
You can add subtitles to a video to extend to a wider audience. They are generally designed for audiences that can hear the audio but require dialogue to be provided in text form, e.g., foreign films. Closed captions also describe non-speech elements, e.g., coughs, music, door slams, and noise.
People often scroll videos on social media while juggling tasks like working, studying, or commuting and may have their device’s sound muted. Captions and subtitles are the best way to ensure that your video’s message is conveyed even without the sound on. Videos with subtitles attract more views, inciting curiosity and encouraging viewers to watch them through to the end. It increases the video’s dwell time, which is great for search engine optimization. It also helps you reach many viewers who might not have seen your brand’s message and content.
They Make Your Content Accessible
As video marketing continues to grow as a major element in the marketing mix, subtitles will help you reach a wider audience. Subtitles, or captions, are textual translations of a video’s dialogue and appear at the bottom of a screen. They are designed for viewers who can hear the audio but may need help understanding it due to language barriers, ear conditions, or other reasons. They can also provide clarity for content with technical language or industry jargon.
For example, if you create a medical or crime show with complicated terminology or brand names that aren’t easily identifiable, adding subtitles will ensure your audience can follow along without missing a beat. Additionally, the younger generation often multitasks, meaning they can only sometimes focus on a video. Adding captions allows them to keep up with the conversation while still doing other tasks, and they’re more likely to watch your video if it has subtitles.
They Help You Engage With Your Audience
In a world where people’s social feeds are cluttered with videos, subtitles help them stand out. They are also a great way to reach a wider audience and keep viewers engaged by adding value.
While subtitles are similar to captions, they differ in that they share a specific piece of dialogue from a video, while captions show all types of audio cues (music, coughs, door slams, etc.). Subtitles are also typically translated into different languages, e.g., foreign films, which makes them more visible to a global audience. Lastly, subtitles are generally cheaper than closed captions as they require less work. However, that depends on whether they need translation and synchronization services and how much they are used.
They Increase Viewing Time
While subtitles and captions may seem similar initially, they are designed for different purposes. Captions primarily provide content to people who are deaf or have hearing impairments and also for non-native speakers watching foreign films. They transcribe speech and non-speech audio, such as background music, coughing, door slamming, ringing phones, thunderstorms, etc.
Subtitles are generally designed to complement video footage by showing a text version of the dialogue in the film or podcast. They also transcribe speech and non-speech sounds and display them alongside the video to make it easier for viewers to follow. Adding subtitles to your videos is straightforward on most platforms. However, each forum has its own set of guidelines for captioning and varying standards for when you need to use a certain type of file.
They Help You Reach People With Hearing Disabilities
With 80% of YouTube viewers coming from outside the US and a growing number of mobile users who watch videos with their sound muted, it’s important to consider the accessibility of your content. Adding video subtitles and captions can help reach a wider audience. Captions (closed captions) are written transcriptions synchronized with audio to allow audiences who cannot hear the speech in videos to understand the content.
They can be “closed” so that they can only be displayed when the video is played or “open,” which allows them to be always displayed. Captions are usually designed to capture both the speech and non-speech sounds in a video, such as coughing, door slams, music, thunderstorms, and dog barkings. Subtitles, conversely, translate on-screen text directly into the viewer’s native language and are generally displayed at the bottom of a screen. They are typically shown in foreign films.
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