Real-time closed captioning is now enabled automatically for live-streamed meetings by default! Check out this demo of the multilingual closed captioning feature:
You can confirm that this setting is enabled on your meeting by opening the meeting editor, scrolling down to the Streaming Video section, and clicking More Video Options:
You'll see that "Enable Closed Captioning" is checked. It should be enabled by default. Captions will automatically be visible for meeting viewers on the live meeting site during the meeting, once streaming is enabled. You'll also see a green "Closed Captions Running" in your public conference line admin view on the live meeting site:
Note: You can opt to turn this feature off; however, if you edit this setting after your meeting has started, you'll need to use the admin menu on the live site and click "Start new CC stream" to turn closed captioning back on: |
We built this tool specifically to address the limitations inherent in platforms like Youtube, Zoom, and Webex.
Zoom captioning limitations:
Zoom allows up to 5 interpreted languages, but requires you to bring your own human interpreter for each language
Even if you have human interpreters, participants who need language interpretation need to download and install the desktop Zoom app to access interpreters
This option also requires an enterprise license, several days for setup, and the resources to staff language interpreters for every meeting.
For these reasons Zoom's native interpretation options are prohibitively expensive for even our largest partners.
YouTube live captioning limitations:
YouTube automatic live captioning is currently only available to English channels with over 10,000 subscribers.
If you have 10k+ subscribers, YouTube still does not guarantee the availability of automatic captions.
If you have 10k+ subscribers, and do notice these are enabled, your broadcast will still require use of the higher-latency stream option, meaning additional lag.
If you have a third party captioning plugin, you can push captions directly to YouTube, but live captioning with your own encoder currently limits you to one caption language.
Post-production captions are widely-supported, but this option prevents hearing impaired and non-English speakers from accessing and participating in your meeting.
Facebook live captioning limitations:
Facebook has introduced support for live English closed captions, but currently does not natively support any other languages.
Facebook's default live stream approach means additional latency (lag time) to support captions.
Third party tools have emerged for multilingual live closed captioning, but so far have been limited to "burn in" captions, meaning you have to run your video through their service and a separate stream is required for each additional language.
WebEx closed captioning limitations:
At the time of this writing (summer 2021), WebEx requires you to appoint a human transcriber to type captions.
Even if you have a fast-typing transcriber, only one caption language is supported natively.
Learn more: