According to a recent survey, more than 90% of the people who watch videos on their smartphones do so without the sound on. This survey also found that about 80% of these people were more likely to sit through an entire online video when there were captions included for it.
If you’re someone who is always posting videos online for professional purposes, these stats suggest you should add captions to your videos. They also suggest you should take advantage of live captioning services if you post a lot of real-time videos online.
So, what is live captioning? That’s precisely what we’re going to discuss today. We’re going to do it in an attempt to show you just how beneficial live captioning can be.
Learn more about live closed captioning below and then think about if you should start utilizing live captioning on behalf of your business.
What Is Live Captioning?
If you’ve ever pushed the CC button on your TV’s remote control, you’re probably familiar with what closed captions are. Closed captions reveal what people are saying on TV shows and in movies so that anyone who can’t hear them while watching them for one reason or another can follow along with what’s going on.
Live captioning is essentially the real-time version of this. When there is a sporting event being shown on TV or a business meeting being broadcasted on YouTube, there will be live captioning that will appear on the bottom of the screen. It will catch every single word that is spoken as well as any other noises that are made.
How Does Live Captioning Work?
There are two very different ways in which live captioning can be incorporated into real-time broadcasts both on TV and on the internet. They’re both effective when it comes to adding live captions to these broadcasts.
For years now, stenographers have been providing live captioning for real-time events. Stenographers are trained transcriptionists who are capable of sitting and listening to a real-time event and typing out everything that is said during it with remarkable accuracy.
In more recent years, though, a lot of stenographers have been replaced by speech-to-text software that can also be used for live captioning purposes. This software can transcribe anything that is said during a real-time event and turn it into captions at the bottom of a TV, computer, or smartphone screen.
If you ever need to have live captioning done, you’ll have to decide which of these two methods will be more effective for you. An increasing number of businesses are choosing to run with live captioning software versus stenographers. But both are still excellent options for all your live captioning needs.
Which Types of Live Events Can You Use Live Captioning For?
Once upon a time, most businesses didn’t have to worry about obtaining live captioning services. They didn’t really hold many real-time broadcasts of their own, so they didn’t have to figure out a way to add live captioning to them.
But nowadays, it’s not uncommon at all for companies to stage real-time events and livestream them online. Your company might already be in the habit of doing this.
Here are several of the different types of live events that you can use live captioning for:
- Business meetings
- Video conference calls
- Concerts
- Breaking news broadcasts
- And more
If your company runs any real-time broadcast either on TV or on the internet, you should look into live captioning them. You can add a live caption for everything that is said and done during a real-time broadcast to make it easy for people to follow along with it.
What Are the Benefits of Live Captioning?
Adding live captioning to your company’s real-time broadcasts is obviously going to call for you to make an investment on your part. You’ll need to pay to take advantage of live captioning services.
But you won’t mind spending money on live captioning services one bit once you realize all the benefits that they’ll provide for you. Check out several of the biggest benefits of live captioning below:
- Live captioning will help your real-time broadcasts to reach a much larger audience than they would otherwise
- It will make your real-time broadcasts more inclusive and ensure that they don’t violate the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990
- It will entice people to spend more time watching your real-time broadcasts
As you can see, it’s going to make all the sense in the world to buy into live captioning. After you see how beneficial that it can be, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start adding live captioning to your company’s real-time broadcasts so much sooner.
How Can You Add Live Captioning to Your Real-Time Videos?
Now that you know the answer to the question, “What is live captioning?”, and you know all about the benefits of live captioning, you might be interested in adding live captioning to your company’s videos from now on. But how can you actually go about doing it?
It’s easier than you might think. You can have live captions added to your company’s videos from here on out by bringing a live caption service on board to help you. They can set you up with the live closed captioning that you need so that you can begin to reap the rewards of using live captioning for all your real-time videos.
Start Incorporating Live Captioning Into Your Real-Time Videos Today
Live captioning is something that has been available for real-time TV programming for a long time now. But it isn’t just TV producers who should be utilizing live captioning services anymore.
If your company creates any real-time content that airs on either TV or on the internet, you should also make it a point to use live captioning. After finding out the answer to the question, “What is live captioning?”, and hearing about the benefits of it, you should be sold on how important it’s going to be for you and your company.
Discover more about some of the other business services that your company should consider investing in by reading through the other articles found on our blog.
Piran is the bestselling author of the Zobuz, TheHearus and other well known Blogs. Her books have sold hundred of copies and are published in different languages.
