Adding Captions to MediaSpace Videos

This article was last updated Feb 18, 2025 @ 12:46 pm.

Adding captions to videos improves accessibility for all viewers, regardless of their physical abilities. Captions can help enhance viewers’ comprehension in noisy or quiet environments, and boost engagement by making content easier to understand.

There are two main ways captions are added to your MediaSpace videos: automatically machine-generated, or through a request for professional captioning. The sections below outline the reasons for utilizing each and how to decide which is best for your video.

Using Machine Captions

At PSU, machine captions are automatically generated for all videos uploaded into MediaSpace. This includes both manually uploaded videos as well as those automatically migrated into MediaSpace from Zoom recordings. Machine captions are a great starting place when you don’t have time to wait for professional captions to be created or when you create a video that will only be used once. However, they usually do not meet ADA accessibility requirements due to their lack of accuracy.

To ensure that your machine captions are ADA accessible, you should always review the default captioning and edit where necessary. You can learn more about editing your captions by reviewing Adding Captions to MediaSpace Videos.

Enabling Machine Captions Settings

Once you’ve confirmed that your captions are accurate, you will need to enable them to be viewable on your video. To do this:

Select the desired media from your My Media list.
Open the Actions menu (1) and select Edit (2) from the dropdown menu.

Choose the Captions (3) tab below the media.
A table appears that shows your caption file. In this table to the far right is the Show Captions on Player icon (4). Use this icon to toggle your captions on.

Request Professional Captions, when appropriate

Professional captioning is a paid service with a per-video-minute captioning rate. Professional captions meet higher accuracy standards than machine captions because a professional captioner reviews and edits the captions for accuracy.

Professional captioning may be requested through the Office of Academic Innovation (OAI), the Disability Resource Center (DRC), and the Office of Information Technology (OIT), depending on the nature of your multimedia content. Please refer to the options below for details:

If you are a faculty member requesting captioning for academic course content you own that will be reused, is required for students, and is located in your MediaSpace account, please request captioning through the OAI: Caption Request Form (for Academic Content).

Note: Because of our service billing process, you will need to submit a separate request for each video you would like to have captioned.

If you are a faculty member requesting captioning on behalf of a student registered with the DRC, please request captioning through the DRC: Accessible Media Transcript/Caption Request for Student Registered With DRC.
If you are a pdx.edu content developer and you are planning to share multimedia content via the public-facing pdx.edu website, please request captioning through the OIT: Caption Request for pdx.edu Multimedia.