SOLVED

How to get custom vtt subtitle or caption file to show up in the transcript window and be searchable

Copper Contributor

@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?

28 Replies

@Matt Cannady

I understand that, but just because it's not available I want to add the file manually ...

 

@Tomislav Karafilov

Yes, I have the same experience. But I think that's a mistake. Because if I have uploaded the file manually, it should also be displayed ...

@Thomas Maier @Matt Cannady @Marc Mroz I have tested it. The transcript option is only displayed when the captions language is set to English or Spanish. If you have manually uploaded your own vtt captions file and set the captions language to German for example, the transcript option is not displayed. I think in the software is a simple if statement present (if (captions language == English or Spanish) {DisplayTranscript();}) that should be changed to "if ((captions is autogenerated and captions language == English or Spanish) or (captions is manually uploaded no language check required!)) { DisplayTranscript(); }" (sorry for this unnice programming language :-)).

@Asmita Kulkarni (RADIANT) - Can you take a look at this issue? We don't show the transcript window unless the caption is listed as English or Spanish. 

Yes, we are looking into this to help improve the current experience. Please @ me if there are further questions that I can help answer.

@Matt Cannady 

@Marc Mroz 

 

I tried adding the WEBVTT line at the top of my .vtt subtitle file, as mentioned in your post, and it worked for one file, but then I tried it again with another video just to make sure it wasn't a fluke and it didn't work.

 

I've been finding that Stream is displaying captions or transcripts inconsistently; sometimes the transcript shows up, but then sometimes I get a message saying "Audio transcripts aren't quite ready yet. Check back soon."

 

Just wondering why I might be getting inconsistent results

@_Mits_ 

All I can think of is to make sure your time codes all have at least one second difference (or more) for start and stop for each line. If any of your lines have an invalid time separation it seems to break it. Not sure if the developers have done anything about this one yet. Good luck!

@Matt Cannady 

 

That seems to have worked! I had a point where I meant to have a comma, corrected that, and now it seems to be working consistently!

@Matt Cannady 

 

I think I spoke too soon, haha!

 

I did try reformatting but, in the transcript window, I'm still getting the same message, "Audio transcripts aren't quite ready yet. Check back soon."

 

It seems to be alternating where one video will work, the next will not, and then the next will, and then the next will not and so on.

I appreciate that Marc but I have found that the accuracy of the auto generated file leaves a lot to be desired when compared with autogenerated captions created in either Descript, Otter.ai or Transcriptive. @Marc Mroz