Studio Automatically Captions Any Uploaded Media From Today!

[AkosFarago]

While not explicitly outlined in our public roadmap, today we implemented a significant accessibility enhancement for Studio. There are a few nuances that I wanted to touch upon here, so that you understand exactly what this automation means for you.

Effective immediately, there's no longer a need to manually specify the spoken language and request captions for uploaded media. Upon navigating to the Captions tab, you'll notice the following notification.

The language detection mechanism can recognize English videos with over 99% accuracy, while it is somewhat over 95% for non-English videos. This implies that while auto-captioning may not cover every video, the 1% typically aligns with those that historically struggled to generate captions even upon request.

As before, you'll receive email notifications when automatic captions are ready for review or if the process encounters an issue. In the latter scenario, manual caption requests remain an option, following the existing workflow.

With this improvement, we have not introduced new languages, but if the need arises and we see good results on automatically detecting languages of non-English videos then we are open to extend them. Additionally, we're actively exploring the feasibility of captioning YouTube content, which will be the next big upgrade in video accessibility in the future.

Let me know if you have any specific questions!

Best,

Akos

[lars_arne_muren]

I just tested auto-subtitles with a short film with speech in Norwegian (Bokmål). Unfortunately, the result that comes out is in Swedish, which is 100% wrong.

I can't see any way to manually order subtitles in Norwegian in Studio as it was before. Does this mean that Norwegian is no longer an option for automatic subtitling?

[AkosFarago]

Hi @lars_arne_muren,

We have not changed the supported languages list, Norwegian is still there to request captions manually for the media the detected langauge was incorrect.

Did you delete to Swedish caption before trying to request another one? If you still see the missing Norwegian support, feel free to DM me here in the Community and we will quickly take a look at it.

Best,

Akos

[lars_arne_muren]

Hi Akos,
Thanks for the quick reply and the tip about deleting the Swedish caption first. I should have figured that out myself. 🙂 I just tried this, and then I got the interface where I can request a Norwegian caption. The result looks good too. When I upload new films to Studio, Norwegian comes as an automatic caption, so the system seems to work as intended.

We look forward to testing the auto caption of Norwegian in Studio in the future.👍

[cthomas5]

I love to see that captions are now automatically generated for all Studio uploads. Editing the auto-generated captions is quite easy for faculty and staff to accomplish.

However, I do have some concerns about the "create captions from scratch" interface. I tested it out this week and it is quite difficult to use. For example, the video does not pause as you are typing and the timings are usually incorrect and have to be adjusted manually. It is a tough sell to have faculty use it in its current state. Are there any plans to enhance this editor and make it more user-friendly?

[dbrace]

This will be awesome for the vast majority of our users and use cases!  Thank you!

I do have a question, based on a scenario that I am commonly in as an admin.  I regularly use Canvas Studio and Screencast-o-Matic to do a screen recording of something and typically have my microphone disabled/muted during the recording.

For the first recording that I made in this way, I received a "Generating automatic captions has failed for your video!" email notification because there was intentionally no audio.  Is there anyway to suppress/prevent that type of email from being sent/received?

UPDATE: Another example for this type of situation is for our students that are taking sign language courses.  They regularly need to record themself signing something for some sort of assessment and there should not be any audio.

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Generally useful, but in some instances teachers have their own caption files that are already correct.  Do they have to wait until the auto captioning finishes before they can delete and replace it with their own?  Is there any way a teacher can turn this off for their Studio account?  There are many such videos for film instructors, and it slows down their process.

Thanks!

[adam_c_voyton]

The recent updates to Canvas Studio are intriguing and practical. At my institution we utilize Kaltura as our online video platform, which provides comparable functionality, such as automated closed captions through Verbit and the capability to import and caption YouTube videos. The ongoing evolution of the Studio video platform introduces valuable and innovative enhancements.

[CynthiaEdwards1]

This is a wonderful feature. I, too, wonder (as some others have also stated) if this conflicts with the captioning from Verbit. It would be helpful to have a turn on/off option for the automatic captions.

Thank you, @AkosFarago for all you do for Canvas and Canvas Studio!

[isabel_anievas]

I have a question. Can I change the language in which the automatic captions will be done? I can see that captions are automatically done in English as soon as I upload the video. Is this the default? With older videos I could easily request captions in different languages. I do not see the same options now. Am I missing something? Thank you!

[JACOBSEN_C]

Have you-all created a video demonstration of the process?  We could use that as something to share with our campus.

[AkosFarago]

Hi all,

THANK YOU for all the feedback! I also wanted to call out that we are thinking about introducing auto-publishing with some Admin control over that functionality. Feel free to drop me a message here if you are interested to have a chat about that specifically and I’ll reach out to you!

@cthomas5 
Thank you for the feedback specifically on the from scratch caption creation. The experience is the same as when you are editing caption, and therefore I am yet to see where exactly in the process you would need to have video automatically paused. Best, if you send me a quick screencast in a private message with the explanation and I am happy to take a look at it!

@dbrace 
Great feedback! I’ll take this back to the team and see what we can do.

@CynthiaEdwards1 
Not at the moment, but we are thinking about a solution already. In the meantime, feel free to delete the auto-caption once it is completed and request the professional captions.

@isabel_anievas 
The language of the auto-captioning is detected by Studio automatically. If you want to request captions manually on another language, feel free to delete the auto-caption first, then you can do it.

@JACOBSEN_C 
Not at the moment. Although, we updated the Studio Guides with all the necessary information! Let me know if something is missing and we will add it in!

[cthomas5]

Hi @AkosFarago ,

Thanks for your reply! I realize that the captioning interface is the same for editing and creating from scratch, but the user experience of creating captions and editing existing captions are very different.

Edits are generally minimal and can be made super quickly, but when creating a caption, the user is typing what they are hearing in the video. If the video doesn't automatically pause when typing (as it does in many other caption creation interfaces), the user gets behind very quickly and it becomes a more difficult process. In the couple of videos I have tested using the "from scratch" option, it also leads to a lot of timing adjustments that need to be made once all of the captions are added. I hope that clarifies the issue.

Thanks!

[kharris01]

The time the automated captions take has increased over these past few weeks. Any reason why? Any way to address the time lag?

[knoxd]

This is a very helpful update!  Thank you for the continuous progression of the produce and insightful communication to help users navigate. 

[mswindle]

Are there any plans to auto-caption videos uploaded and recorded in the media recorder as well?

Thanks,

Monica

[AkosFarago]

@kharris01, apologies for the late answer, we have not experienced any difference in the latency of the generated captions. Is the issue still present?

@mswindle, we do auto-caption everything except YouTube and Vimeos now, would you please elaborate more?

Thank you!

[mswindle]

@AkosFarago I meant in regular Canvas not Studio.

Thanks,

Monica

[AkosFarago]

@mswindle auto-captioning is only available for Studio videos, with the exception of the upcoming screen recorder in the Speedgrader, those video feedback to students will also receive auto-captioning. 

Best,

Akos