Technology

Technology

YouTube adds captions. Find out why. YouTube is adding captions to millions of Internet videos. The feature provides viewers a deeper understanding of a video. Adding captions and subtitles makes a videos more accessible to people who can't follow along with the audio—either because they speak a different language, or because they are deaf or hard of hearing.

The feature unveiled Thursday expands upon speech-recognition technology that YouTube began using to make captions available on a limited number of videos late last year.

YouTube's audience will be able to request captions at the press of a button. Video producers will also be able to download the automated captions and improve upon them.

For now, YouTube's captioning tool will only work on videos with English audio, although there are plans to include more languages. The English audio, however, can be translated into 50 different languages.

YouTube, owned by Google, is the Web's most popular video site. Its users upload about 28,800 hours of video each day.

- Posted on March 5, 2010
Submitted by Jazen on Wednesday, 05/26/2010 - 19:36.

This has been very useful but at the same time very annoying! You're watching a video and all of a sudden something pops up which kinda disturbs you. You know what I mean?

Submitted by charlesthomas on Wednesday, 05/26/2010 - 15:46.

I can see this coming in handy for deaf people and people that are hard of hearing, but not people from other places because why would they come here if they can't speak our language? There is no point for it, but I would like to fool around with this new part of Youtube and see what it can and can not do, just for fun. =P

Submitted by t.boyle on Tuesday, 05/25/2010 - 14:34.

this is a good idea because not everyone can hear the same as others, but some of the videos on youtube i wouldn't want my kids listening to.

Submitted by Scott-GodofWar on Monday, 05/24/2010 - 15:44.

I think it is a great idea because I can usually hear what ever is being said but sometimes they talk too soft and I can't hear them.

Submitted by jaclynw-E-even on Friday, 05/21/2010 - 11:16.

I think this is very good for YouTube, it can help people who have difficulty hearing and can not enjoy the same YouTube videos as their friends all can. This also helps people who can not speak the same language as the video publisher understand what is going on. Overall, this brings us together.

Submitted by Hannah A. on Friday, 05/21/2010 - 10:19.

I think that is a great idea. It will make watching videos on Youtube so much easier. For example if you cant hear or understand the person you can still follow along with the video. I wonder what the captions will look like on the screen. The only bad thing about this is that it might for example like cover the persons face. That wouldnt be good!