# HELP: Is There Any Way to Get the Close Caption Feature to Work for YouTube Videos?



## Amie (May 5, 2009)

I see a button in the bottom-right corner of the screen while watching YouTube videos, but every single video I click on says "Close caption not available." Are there *any* videos that *are* close captioned? Can I install a script of some sort that will make everything I watch close captioned? 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

(BTW, I have an iBook G4 running on Panther.)


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## Amie (May 5, 2009)

Anyone?...

I'm not even sure I posted this question in the proper section.


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## ElDiabloConCaca (May 6, 2009)

Close captioning requires the video to have close captioning.  It's not like there's a computer somewhere that's translating the dialog in the video to text on-the-fly.

Think of them like subtitles -- if there are no subtitles included in a movie, then there are no subtitles included in the movie, and there's nothing you can do about it short of transcribing the entire movie yourself and making your own subtitles.

If close captioning isn't available for a video, then it's not available for a video.  I would assume that most (95% or more) of the videos on YouTube are not close captioned.

Here's a slightly goofy video explaining it (and it also includes closed captioning, so the feature actually works for this video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meCIER_s7Ng

But, as said in the video, closed captioning must be explicitly created by the uploader of the video.


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## Amie (May 6, 2009)

Oh, yeah, I totally get that. I just wondered if there were any YouTube vids that *are* close captioned. Seems like none of them are - at least, I haven't found any yet. Which is surprising because 99 percent of   TV shows and movies are, indeed, close captioned ... but when you watch them on YouTube, they are not. I just thought that was weird.


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## ElDiabloConCaca (May 7, 2009)

TV shows on TV have multi-million dollar studios backing them, and creating closed captioning is required in some cases (for those with hearing impairments).

The majority of YouTube videos are shot by amateur videographers -- a lot of the time very poorly at that -- and an amateur videographers normally don't take the time nor have the patience to transcribe their entire video and make closed captions for it.

Closed captions must be manually created for YouTube videos -- and when a TV show is recorded from the TV and converted for YouTube, the closed captions are lost.  Think of closed captions like a separate data stream from the video and audio... a "3rd track", so-to-speak.


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## Amie (May 22, 2009)

ElDiabloConCaca said:


> TV shows on TV have multi-million dollar studios backing them, and creating closed captioning is required in some cases (for those with hearing impairments).
> 
> The majority of YouTube videos are shot by amateur videographers -- a lot of the time very poorly at that -- and an amateur videographers normally don't take the time nor have the patience to transcribe their entire video and make closed captions for it.
> 
> Closed captions must be manually created for YouTube videos -- and when a TV show is recorded from the TV and converted for YouTube, the closed captions are lost.  Think of closed captions like a separate data stream from the video and audio... a "3rd track", so-to-speak.



Thanks, Diablo! As always, you explained it perfectly and made a lot of sense. If you're not already a computer teacher ... well, you should be. 

Although ... I have to question, if that's the case, then why is there a "CC" option button on YouTube at all???


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