Captions or subtitles? What’s the difference?
More importantly, which one should you be using on your videos?
Simply put, captions and subtitles are words on screen that show you what people are saying.
Subtitles are translations for people who speak a different language. Captions are in the same language as the video.
They come in two different flavours – open (or hard) captions are a permanent part of the video and closed (or soft) captions that can be toggled on or off by the viewer usually by clicking a CC button on the video player.
So let’s break these down a little bit
Closed Captions
Closed captions are designed to make video content accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
I think every video should have accurate closed captions as there’s no reason your video shouldn’t be accessible to the widest audience possible, and it’s super easy to do.
Platforms like YouTube automatically create captions for you. When you upload a video, youtube will use it’s own AI to identify what is being said and create closed captions that are timed to the video.
It’s not always 100% accurate though but you can very easily edit the transcript for accuracy if there are any spelling or punctuation mistakes.
With closed captions, You can’t usually apply any fancy formatting like changing the font or colour as it’s the video platform that decides how they appear.
If you’re hosting a video anywhere online, like on your website or YouTube, closed captions are a must.
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Open Captions
But what about open captions?
Open captions are similar to closed captions in content, displaying dialogue and relevant sound effects or non-speech elements. The key difference is that open captions are a permanent part of the video; they cannot be turned off by the viewer.
You’ll see open captions on social videos a lot, especially on platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. This is because the audience is likely to be scrolling their feeds with the sound off.
Open captions not only allow the audience to follow along without turning the sound on, but the extra flexibility you have in designing the open captions as a permanent part of the video means you can get more creative and catch the audience’s eye a lot more.
Open captions work best on social media videos. Any other content like long form YouTube videos or promo videos on your website are better served by closed captions as audiences typically want to be given the choice to turn captions on or off.
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Subtitles
Subtitles are used when the target audience speaks a different language from the original audio.
You should always have these on your video if your audience is likely to not be a native speaker of the language the video was produced in, or if it’s not their first language and they might have trouble following along.
We’ve worked on video projects where we’ve created foreign language versions in Japanese, Chinese, French, German, and more, so there’s no restriction on the type of video that subtitles will help with.
Subtitles can appear in the same formats as captions:
They can be toggled on and off by the viewer or permanently embedded onto the video. The option you use will depend on your audience.
It’s a good idea to have subtitles work as closed caption if your audience will be a mix of people and they’ll want the option to turn them on or off. For example, if the video is on your website or YouTube.
However, if you’re using your video at an international event, and the entire audience will need subtitles to understand what’s being said, then you’ll want permanent subtitles on there, of course.
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The option you choose for your video depends entirely on your audience and where they’re viewing your content.
Are they scrolling through social media and possibly not watching with audio?
Are they on your website or YouTube watching longer-form content?
Or are they perhaps a non-native speaker of the language your video is in?
Ultimately, captions or subtitles are used to enhance the viewing experience of your videos, so that should always be front of mind when decided which option to go for.
