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How to get custom vtt subtitle or caption file to show up in the transcript window and be searchable
Marc Mroz, We've been looking at using Stream for internal technical videos and were also disappointed with the auto-transcription. We now have a hand crafted transcription file to use with our videos and would like to sync that vtt file with our videos on Stream. I have uploaded a video and vtt which gives me a video with captions but no transcript or search. I've uploaded other videos with the auto-transcript that did give me the transcription and search box. We have a corporate office 365 account and don't appear to have any limitations in this regard.
Should we expect our custom uploaded vtt to generate the transcript mode and deep search to the side of the video?
Ok... I finally figured out what was going on after lots of trial/error and closer looking at the problematic VTT files.
It turns out Stream will not parse the VTT file uploaded in the caption section and turn it into the transcript if there is a line in the file that has no elapsed duration/gap between the time codes. For example like this:
00:16:24.490 --> 00:16:24.490 keep falling apart.
If you change the time codes so there is a time gap between them, it works fine. Like this:
00:16:24.490 --> 00:16:24.491 keep falling apart.
So for the example VTT file you sent, there is actually 2 lines in the file where there is no gap in the time codes. I updated these 4 lines in your file to ensure there is gap and the subsequent line also starts at the new time. Once I did that your custom VTT file works correctly and shows up as the transcript. (See the attached file below that is the fixed VTT, to try yourself.)
00:16:24.490 --> 00:16:24.491 keep falling apart. 00:16:24.491 --> 00:16:26.890 THE WITNESS: 417? 00:41:07.740 --> 00:41:07.741 read it. 00:41:07.741 --> 00:41:21.720 (Requested portion of record read.)
I'll file a bug on our side in Stream to fix this issue so that our parsing logic still works even if there are lines in the VTT with the beginning/ending time codes the same. I don't know how easy/hard this will be to fix on our side.
- Marc Mroz
Microsoft
You can upload your own VTT file and have it show up in the transcript window on the side of the video player and be searchable. You just need to upload the custom VTT you created/edited in the "Captions" section not the "Subtitle" section. I'm guessing you are uploading them into the subitltes section.
Here is what you would do.
Captions > Autogenerate a caption file > uncheck this box
A new link will show up under this section "Upload a caption file", click it
In the pop-up pick the language your file is for
Click "select file" or drag / drop your custom VTT file on to the pop-up.
OK
Now your custom VTT file will be shown in the transcript, indexed, and searchable.
In addition if you don't want to hand craft your VTT file, you could just edit the autogenerated one. We now have a edit button on the transcript window for owners of the video where they can then edit the text of the transcript inline as the video is playing.
I'm encouraged to know that this should work. I've followed these directions and still don't have the option to turn on the transcription panel for this video and caption. Again, if I let it auto-generate the captions I do have the option. My thought is that either I am missing another setting somewhere, it's not working as it should, or there may be some admin setting my IT department needs to change?
- Marc Mroz
Matt Cannady - I think I might have reproduced the issue, but I need to try a few more things. Can you give me the exact flow you did? What video language did you pick when it was uploaded? Did you have the autogenerate caption file checked at upload? When did you upload the VTT File?
I think there might be an issue if you don't let it autogenerate the caption file on it's own that when you upload the custom caption file it doesn't think it can have a transcript. I'm still testing a few thing though to see if I can narrow down when this happens.
