Closed Captioning

I didn't see any support for Closed Captioning. This is a feature which is dear to me since most of my family is deaf and it would make sharing of our videos a fullfilling experience for them. So far, Google Video has a limited implementation and even what little is there, it is a huge step forward towards sharing our experience.
Thanks
Rick.

Thanks for the reply. Bundling the Text within the HD Video would be a solution, but when it is being resized for different resolutions, the text would either be incredibly small at YouTube resolutions or uncomfortably big at 1080p resolutions. Having a text solution wthin the actual service that overlays the video at the timecodes would be great since it doesn't mar the original video feed.

Thanks again for the quick reply. This is a great site as it has great HD support and a sharp player.

I also need captioning for my uploaded videos. I know it's not common for internet streaming videos, but if it looks like there's any possibility it would sure be nice. I also have a lot of family and friends who are deaf. I don't know how google video does it, but it definitely expands the accessibility of viewers to a crowd of people that love visual stimulation.

I've only been a member a few days, REALLY love the site and am totally addicted. CC is a revolutionary thing to provide support for, maybe there's a 3rd party downloadable program for adding CC that can be switched on and off within the vimeo player?

I need to add my voice in here. I use Google Video because of its CC feature, and more specifically the ability to add CC data in multiple languages. The nice thing is that there is a standard that can be followed so once you parse the file you should be able to put up any language needed.

There are two reasons I like this:
1 - Google is able to parse the CC data and search against it. If you offer this up for videos with CC data in it the hits for these videos would increase on Google. I see a radically huge increase in traffic for the videos with CC data... from only a couple thousand hits to tens of thousand hits for the same video with and without CC data.
2- I have a worldwide audience that speaks many different languages. By having a few translators I'm able to offer my videos to a much wider audience base.

I understand the need to dedicate engineering resources, but since so few file sharing sites have this option and it can be a deal breaker for some, I would encourage you to take a closer look at CC.

I'm hearing impaired and is developing yoga programs for people like me. Was thinking about inserting an
interpreter within my screen. A video within a video.

That's a feature I'd need too: I am italian, my actors speak italian, but we have friends all over the world who speak english, and I'd love to have "soft subs" function to let them enjoy our work at the best

Thanks Spacevidcast ..
I'll check them out.

I sigh the request for the Closed Captioning / subtitles with both my hands. Many people from all over the world would love Vimeo even more for being able to sub their non-english films. Is such feature that hard to implement?

I have a feeling youtube and google's recent addition of thought bubbles, captioning, and tagging with links was in development for a long time. But maybe I'm wrong. I think its a very cool function beyond the hearing impaired and translation functionality.

In the long run, I think live im-ing and captioning feeds will be a way that some people communally take in content. Not just the creator will have comment/captions to add, but people can subscribe or choose to see other peoples comments.

Meta layers of commentary. I think it will be a new reason to watch an "awful" show if you can subscribe to an amusing person's commentary, or watch with friends "live" or with your friend's commentaries/footprints turned on. Your friend can leave you jokes and comments specifically for you. Imagine a sad part of show coming on... and your friends comment pops up and says: Admit it John, you're crying like a little girl... so did I.

You'll see this emerging in the next couple years and part of the public space in 5 or 6 years. Comments function in this way on youtube, but you can't properly get rid of the chatter that you don't want ie the Hatred and spammers.

Privately Public commentary is the wave of the future.

It's also part of the future of advertising... everything on screen should have a link.. and or a for sale link, whenever you press pause. Some people may choose to have the links always be present ( for certain products they are looking to buy ie shoes) even when its live because they choose to see what is being sold on any given show. Sex and the City would have been great for this model. Privately Public commentary and feeds also has the facebook related business model. Friends and connections that buy or recommend trends can move product and generate revenue.

Imagine shows generating a true average revenue per view by selling real product and only subsidized by ad revenue, rather than being a primarily eyeball/ad revenue system with minor amounts of paid for product placement and branding that exists today.

I am a web designer who works with many organizations serving the deaf and hard of hearing population. If you were to add captioning functionality similar to Google Video, I wouldn't hesitate to highly recommend your service to those organizations. The combination of HD video capability (for crisp sign language) and captioning would make Vimeo the definitive go-to place for those organizations -- instead of Google Video.

sorry to be an ass, but youtube does it.

hi,

when I see this thread and this here vimeo.com/forums/topic:6636
I think there is a demand for subtiles/closed captioning

;)

Hey.
This is a basic accessibility requirement. Veoh could really rock the world if they offered this. It is gold for hearing impaired folks.

Compliance with Rule 508 in video is something I deal with daily.

First, there is no such thing as closed captioning on the web. It does not exist. What does exist is open captioning and timed text display.

While some video formats support captioning and timed text display, not all video does. I've used it or some work that I've presented with Windows Media Player.

For Vimeo's part, the engineering is not that big a deal. It's likely the software they use could already support the timed captioned files they need. As anyone knows who's done this work, the REAL task is getting the transcript done and timed. This would be an impossible task for the staff of Vimeo, but if the user community wanted to submit the timed files, the rest of the process could likely be automated.

Blake, what do you think? Would you guys be willing to give this a whirl if the software you had could do this seamlessly with a few mods to the encoding program? I don't remember what you guys are running on the back end to do your encoding, but I'd be willing to do some legwork on it.

It might help me at work as well, so I'm willing to give it a try.

Here is a website that I've used to assist with captioning for flash using customized skins. Vimeo simply needs to look at how Adobe does it and/or this company. By the way, this is one of the cheapest ways to get your video captioning. It is not as accurate as a premium service but it's not bad:

captionsync.com/

click on resources

By the way, I need this badly. Most of my work needs to be 508 compliant. Trying using your video editing titling program to produce open captioning...render...render...render...type...listen...type... it is a nightmare from a production stand point.

Here's one more vote for adding captioning/subtitling support to Vimeo's Flash player.

Keeping the text as data, rather than rendering it on the frames, would allow Vimeo to index the captions as part of search. Result: more relevant searches.

And another support for closed captioning on Vimeo, please! I do a lot of work in local government and we are bound by accessibility guidance that means I have to supply closed captions / subtitles wherever possible.

That means Google Video for now. I could use YouTube, but we have had a bad experience of inappropriate 'related' videos being shown next to a video for a schools project.

I really like Vimeo and would love to see support for CC. I'm happy to beta test!!

I'm hearing impaired so I'm hoping this feature will be added as soon as possible. It's really important for accessibility. Incidently, you can stop YouTube coming up with related videos when you embed them. Just add "&rel=0" after the video ID number in the embed code. It's a pain though, as you have to do it for each one.

Hi all. Please put me down as another vote for a proper closed captioning feature.

Around one in seven people have some kind of hearing loss. The number of people trying to watch your videos in a difficult environment (too noisy or too quiet) must be at least the same again. And that's before you go into the massive issue of translation subtitling, which opens videos up for billions of people.

If you're not detecting a demand, it's probably because the massive number of people who need a closed captioning feature just don't come to Vimeo, they go to Google or YouTube where they can get closed captioning. Which is a terrible shame, cos you kick both those sites' asses in every other conceivable way.

I'm starting up an internet captioning/subtitling company, and I'd really like to be able to recommend that my clients host their videos with you. At the moment I can't, and that seems a shame.

If you need any help testing or developing, or any advice on what formats of caption file to support etc., give me a yell.

+1

Our research lab (The Open Publishing Lab), is located at the Rochester Institute of Technology. RIT shares a campus with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, so our audience includes both hearing and deaf individuals.

It's a catch-22. We of course want to make our videos available to deaf and hard of hearing students. But we do not want to edit text overlays directly into the video, as not all viewers will want them. For now, we include transcripts with some of our videos. This is less than ideal for either party.

We are very happy with Vimeo's service, but are disappointed that Vimeo does not have any closed captioning support - especially considering that YouTube already does.

See the thing that Staff might be missing here... Is not everyone wants to see CC, so the ability to turn it off should be available.

For example when I watch movies I turn on Subtitles just to know exactly what I may have missed. The thing is if someone else is watching they are 9 times out of 10 asking me to turn it off (I guess it can be distracting).

So yes we can add manually, but what if some of our viewers don't want to see it, there should be an option to turn off or on.

We would love to add captions too for 508 compliance, but understand the complications behind developing it. Thanks, Vimeo!

This is another cry out for captioning/subtitle support. Uploading whole separate versions of a video when you're potentially getting it translated into half a dozen or more languages is a hell of a slog! And we really want all the versions on the same page, anyway, for sundry good reasons. Not to mention the advantages relating to search, etc., of having transcriptions visible along with videos.

I see that CS3 has captioning support, might this be helpful at all?
digital-web.com/articles/captions_flash_video/

Not sure from this thread if you have already developed closed captioning - but - we are coming from Google Video (which just stopped accepting new videos). Thanks to closed captioning our videos are viewed over 1,500 times a day. Google indexes those captions and they become a way for people to find our videos. Would LOVE to see this feature on Vimeo for our church videos.

Oh, there's a W3C XML standard for captioning called DFXP. XML is easy to import into Flash. There are also free tools to create DFXP captions. You can crowdsource captioning: just provide an upload interface to add DFXP to videos, so anybody can caption any video. Then add a rating or "report spam" feature to ensure the quality of the captions. That's not rocketscience, and your competitors have something similar already.

We'd be interested in multi-language subtitles on the videos, we currently author DVDs with about 6-8 subtitle versions in European and East Asian languages.

multilanguage subtitles would be the only major missing feature, in my opinion (REPLACING VIDEO rules). My films go to 10 different countries, including the Far East, and they are spoken in 5 or 6 different languages... we have the (wo)manpower to translate them, all we need is the platform. do that, and i will be Vimeo PLU$$$ customer.

Stopping by to let you Vimeo folks know that we haven't forgotten. :)

Also to let you know that blip.tv, iTunes, YouTube and GoogleVids all now have a closed captioning feature. As Namics says, adding the ability to use .SRT files, .SUB files or DFXP (Timed Text XML) files is simple in the grand scheme of things. Hell, there are users here who could help you with it. And in the meantime you are losing ground to vastly inferior competitors, which bugs seven shades of hell out of me cos I'm a Vimeo fan.

Allowing yourselves to be beaten on this issue is frankly silly, because on every other criterion you're absolutely the best video hosting site in the world. But for millions of users (yes, that's right, MILLIONS - about 35 million deaf/hard of hearing in the US, 9 million in the UK, for a start) you are simply not an option on account of lack of closed captions. I remain bewildered by your position on this.

Come on, Vimeo. Catch up with the rest of the world.

Yes, please bring captioning to Vimeo! YouTube's captioning feature works great, you can just turn them on if you need them, but if you don't need them, you don't have to have them overlayed on the video (potentially lessing the experience for hearing people). Just support adding in an SRT or SUB file. Easy enough.

CC would be great to have on Vimeo, I am new here and the first I was looking for was CC. I make Permanent subs to my videos because the content I make is not English. CC would help to make subs in English, Swedish and Finnish for those who can't hear anything.

Bump. I love what you've done with Vimeo, but lagging behind on CC is a big fail. It's totally not hard.

I work at a university where we strive to make every video accessible with CC. We have recently discovered Vimeo as an excellent solution for some of our longer videos. Please, please consider adding this functionality to Vimeo. Making content accessible is NOT a frivolous feature!

here is another support for CC

I think that the demand for closed captioning exists as it would benefit everyone in terms of accessibility and search engine optimization. I have been a huge fan of Vimeo, but it looks like I will have to transition to YouTube as the majority of my videos need to be Section 508 compliant due to accessibility requirements at my university. It really is the right thing to do...it would benefit Vimeo...I am surprised at the resistance to closed captioning from Vimeo.

Yeah, we are in the same boat here. Our audience, although small, keeps asking for captions. I will also have to move back to YouTube it seems :(

There is a way to create open captions on a mac if you have MovCaptioner and QT Pro. MovCaptioner will help you to create an embedded text track in your movie. After it imports the text track you must re-export (note - don't just do a save as, but export) to a new movie and the captions will be combined with the video track. A trial version of MovCaptioner can be downloaded at synchrimedia.com

I recently joined Vimeo Plus and just assumed that closed captioning would be available. My clients require closed captioning and I would like to use Vimeo to do this.
Vimeo's request for notice of increased demand is a little disingenuous. The fact that YouTube are doing this should be sufficient indication that this service is needed.

I echo the request - ability to display our CC is critical for the videos we produce.

Vimeo is a website acessed from all over the world, and it's purpose itself is supposably coherent with an worldwide proportion trade of information and knowledge. The CC feature needs to be offered. It does not make any sense for us to have to upload 3 times the same video with different subtitles.

I obviously strongly support the request.

The lack of closed captioning support is the reason we are not using Vimeo at the moment. I'm rather disappointed that Vimeo values accessibility so lightly, especially considering the limited effort required to implement TimedText captions.
I have ca. 30 videos with TimedText XML captions. We now host these ourselves with JW Player, which is a less than ideal solution. This is high quality video we want to offer to a broad audience.
YouTube isn't really an option because their video player, ironically, isn't accessible to blind people.

Frankly, I find it kind of cynical to point to 'lack of demand' for not supporting this. You want more deaf people? Do you consciously ignore the international audience? This feature is fairly easy to implement and is of huge benefit to international audiences, search indexing and, of course, the hearing impaired.
Basically, you're turning away the possibility of adding a time-coded, (almost) word for word transcript to a large portion of videos on Vimeo.

I'm not particularly bothered about the terminology used but very much support the ability to be able to add at least one language if not many against a video.

Not only is this needed for multilanguage support but for deaf and hard of hearing. It's also a vicious circle, if subs are not supported, those people will not frequent the site. Very often a site like this will be useless to these potential viewers.

Without this capability, there's a vast audience being cut off.

I'm a co-developer of 22frames.com ( 22frames.com/suggest.aspx ). The grand goal of the service is to index every (public) captioned/subtitled video on the Internet. We are all aware that captioned/subtitled videos are scattered across the Internet on multiple video hosts – generally mixed with the billions of other videos. More here: ( 22frames.com/aboutus.aspx ).

While we have not yet looked at specific approaches to automatically collect captioned/subtitled videos from Vimeo (we are in very early beta and there are many hosts), we are accepting submitted links from multiple video hosts. This includes Vimeo. We are therefore inviting anyone that wants to share videos to explicitly submit them here: ( 22frames.com/suggest.aspx ). Who knows, it may even increase Vimeo's interest in this area.

Has there been any updates on this? I work at CSU Pomona and we have to be 508 compliant. We just started producing more videos and have plans to increase this further. Vimeo is vastly superior to other video hosting sites, yet I will be forced to use something like YouTube because they have some semblance of a CC service.

I also think it's strange that there hasn't been a staff response about this topic for 2 years. Is there some work being done on this or not?

Google just announced that they are providing auto-captioning for YouTube videos... Vimeo is getting even further behind in this area.

ericstoller.com/blog/2009/11/28/google-adds-auto-captioning-to-youtube/

Staff responses here show they haven’t investigated the technical aspects. No user can simply upload a captioned or subtitled video (those are two separate things, and you can have both at once) and just expect it to work.

Tell me, Vimeo staff: What exact formats do you support? Where in the player do I turn captioning and/or subtitling on and off? (Is that keyboard-accessible, or do I have to be completely undisabled apart from a hearing impairment in order to use it?)

Various commenters’ claims that captioning is straightforward and really no trouble whatsoever are false.

I worked as a closed captioning editor for 2 years.

While translating dialogue and sound into words can be complicated, embedding that text in video content is not.

That process was standardized by the FCC in 1976.

(Search Google or Wikipedia for "Line 21" if you want more technical info.)

ALL major video encoding formats--Flash, Quicktime, WMV, AVI, OGG, etc.--support closed captions.

Vimeo took their stand two years ago (via Blake Whitman):

"Until the demand for a feature like this increases, we probably won't have the time to develop it."

And Soxiam's post two weeks ago makes it clear that is still their position today.

If you want closed captions, make more deaf people.

Joe -

Thanks for pointing out that the is a difference between closed captions and subtitles. It is important.

To build on your point:

Closed captions are for the hearing impaired. They attempt to textually communicate dialogue and audio:

NEO: AM I THE ONE?

[TRINITY YAWNS]

Subtitles are for viewers that hear fine but don't understand the language spoken in the film. In subtitles, there is no need to identify Neo as the speaker or point out that Trinity is still audibly bored because the viewer can hear that it is Neo speaking and Trinity yawning. The subtitles for the same dialogue would look something like this (if they were in English):

- Am I the one?

Though Vimeo behaves equally indifferently towards viewers who don't speak English and those that are hearing impaired, they are not the same people.

I would like to see captions available on Vimeo like they are on YouTube. It would be a great feature.

Reel Social Media vastly underestimates the real-world technical complexity of serving genuine closed captions in innumerable video formats in a way that is itself accessible.

This is not an excuse for Vimeo to do nothing, which is all it is currently doing.

I would also like to see CC in Vimeo as my clients and friends are from around the world or are hearing impaired. I am sure that in time, that will happen, hopefully.

I like to see CC captions 2 ...I have many ppl who did'n know any english very well ...a system like dotsub.com or Ted.com will be great :)

One more shout out for closed captioning. I create materials for second language learners who want/need the option of CC to support their comprehension. If Vimeo implemented this feature, I predict there would be a lot more traffic (and plus+ subscriptions) from people working in language instruction.

+1 for the captions support

+1

another +1 for caption support. I think you would find a lot more businesses buying a Plus account to pay for that option.

+1

What is the latest word on captioning and transcripts for Vimeo videos?

i would like to see this too!

I work for a school and would love to use Vimeo, but need to comply to 508.

508!

+1

Considering using Vimeo Plus for educational multimedia project BUT unsure because of CC.

Please add CC.

+1
I would love that.
I can't believe YouTube offers CC for FREE! I wish there were some kind of YouTube plus user :/

+1

I like CC too :)

+1

+1
Youtube has it - our turn, Vimeo.

+1.
I would guess that Vimeo would get alot more business from a growing group of organizations interested in accessible web communications if they added CC feature.

+1 (primarily on behalf of all with hearing challenges)

We would love to be able to upload a timed caption file as well. No need for automatic translation or any of that stuff, just a simple .srt or xml file would do.

Ditto. Work for a school. Need to be 508 compliant. Please add quickly or I'll have to reluctantly go back to YouTube.

I also need 508 compliant video. Please add, so I don't have to go to YouTube!

1+

Could any member of the Vimeo Staff tell us what is the current situation concerning Closed Captioning ?
Apparently, you've been considering adding it for quite some time now, but it's still not available.

Just look at the number of people asking for it.
It is not a function of secondary importance. We really NEED it.

Please, work on it.

As a PLUS member, I would even pay more for this feature. Vimeo would have more non profit organizations using this if compliance could be accomplished!

I NEED THE FEATURE... we're hosting an international film festival, most of the film submissions are from the Middle East (and uploaded onto youtube), but they should be seen by the world. Unfortunately YouTube offers a great caption/translation feature.

Plus, it's nice if it's your native language you can turn off captions (like a DVD). no one likes seeing captions if you can understand the audio. you can't help but read.

please implement,

-A

As a university, we would very much like to see this feature. We are currently looking to discontinue using Vimeo for video hosting because Vimeo does not support closed captioning.

I assumed that Vimeo would support closed captioning, and was unpleasantly surprised when I found out it didn't.

closed captions can be added to vidoes on YouTube and dotsub.com. You can also make the caption file in the free software program Magpie. I find it workswell. But where else can you post videos and add captions? Is there any other site availabe? DailyMotion or MotionMaker??

Plus 1 for captions support. Vimeo would be surprised at how big the deaf community really is. I wonder if it just something that they don't know how to do and can't afford to hire a programmer capable of it. Bummer.

It has been 3 years that Vimeo hasn't added caption. Come on! Deaf, hard of hearing, hearing loss, foreign and English as a Second Language users need it.

YouTube has closed caption feature. Vimeo is all behind. This is not acceptable.

I'm aghast at the Vimeo staff's lack of respect towards their users.
You're just ignoring this thread.

You could give us the reason why you can't/don't want to make subtitles available, but no, you just seem to not care at all about the deaf and foreign people.

We're talking to a brick wall.

+1

You're right JMJ.
"Could any member of the Vimeo Staff tell us what is the current situation concerning Closed Captioning ?" is the kind of question that needs a month to be answered...

I'm not saying Vimeo isn't a quality website.
I've been using it as a viewer for quite some time now, I just created an account and am going to pay for Vimeo Plus.
So obviously, I like Vimeo.

But on that very subject, subtitles, it's just incomprehensible.
I don't understand why it's not available, since the other video websites support it.
And I don't understand why a member of the Vimeo staff can't just leave a message saying "Hey, we know you want it, it will be available soon" or "Don't bother waiting, we're not even working on it".

I mean, it's been a day since my previous message, I'm assuming it has been read by some members of the staff (two of them posted in the "Feature Requests" section afterwards) and none took a minute to say something.
It kind of confirms my feeling of them ignoring this thread.

Now that there is a new law concerning "CC" on public tv - we will be needing to use this on all our videos - online/tv. Will need to find another method if Vimeo is not willing to add a CC option.

I have the expertise and experience on Closed Captioning.
Maybe Vimeo can hire me as part-time technical consultant. No kidding.
For TV CC, there are CEA608 and CEA708 standards. CC data are embedded in picture user data for MPEG2, and embedded in meta data for HD MXF.
In transport stream, they are encoded in VBI (Line 21) for SD and VANC for HD.

For Webcast Closed Captioning,
RealText for RealPlayer,
SubRip .srt for YouTube,
SAMI for WMP,
QText for QuickTime
CC is treated as a text stream to be sync with Video.

For TV CC, you need a software decoder and parser to overlay CC on image.

For Webcast, you just overlay the text on image.

Our commercial NLE can easily create CC and preview CC.

+1

I appreciate the update as well, and agree that the automatic transcription is not a need. That can be done with YouTube.... and then used for creating caption files for other formats.

I look forward to seeing what option you come up with. Even if it is not a perfect one, it will be greatly appreciated by those of us who are waiting eagerly for some type of captioning on vimeo.

Has Vimeo staff looked into the universalsubtitles.org project? This seems like a natural fit for the Vimeo ecosystem...

One of my customers has just signed up for a pro account. We need captions desperately.

Universalsubtitles.org is a promising start, but for embedding videos on our (professional) site the "Subtitle Me" button is too annoying.

What we need is a native captioning / subtitling function within Vimeo.

I'd also suggest looking at Universal Subtitles (US). I use it to caption all my videos, Youtube, and Vimeo, among others. For the Youtube videos, I typically create the captions in US, export the .srt caption file and upload it to Youtube. For Vimeo video though, I tend to caption the video in US, but instead of adding the captions to the Vimeo video, I copy the US embed script, and embed it somewhere in one of my sites. Unfortunately this does not bring people to vimeo, like it does with youtube.

There are several reasons why I use CC. Being in the accessibility business is one of them, but making videos searchable is another big reason. I know vimeo does not rely on add revenue, and I like that, but including transcripts helps people find video, and ultimately draws more people to the vimeo site, and potentially generates more clients.

I'm happy to see Vimeo is thinking about it. Maybe US can provide a relatively cheap, and quick way to get captioning service available here. Even an option to create the subtitles at US, and an option in Vimeo to switch in the US video player, would provide a good solution requiring minimal effort to implement.

For company with such a progressive vibe, I'm surprised at the lack of support -- and understanding -- by Vimeo about improving accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing vis a vis captioning. I think that is why the law that Obama signed last October (the 21st Century Communication and Video Accessibility Act) -- signed on the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act -- is so important. It will basically create the demand that Vimeo acknowledges it needs to take this issue seriously.

To bad Vimeo doesn't see this as a business opportunity.

I work for a major university in the US and we would like to switch from youtube to vimeo but we are required to have closed captioning in our videos (I suspect that's the case with most colleges and universities). That's really the only issue that holds us back but it's a big one. When can we expect to have CC option on Vimeo?

Support. Wholeheartedly. Please.

There is a lot of free software out there to create, for example, srt-coded subtitles, a very simple text-file standard with a timecode, that can then be either read directly by any old javascript or recoded as something else. We are already doing this through the Processing language, in order to control the visual appearance of subtitles more precisely than through the software offered – our staff learned the language and created the software in less than a week. With full appreciation for the increased complexity involved with such an immense amount of material, browser-support etc., it still seems it should be a relatively easy feature to implement. And it would make a lot of people even happier with your otherwise excellent service.

We have a large community of deaf and hard of hearing who have been asking for captioning for quite a while now. With our similar sites adding this feature, I don't know why vimeo hasn't added it yet. I love the site, but cc is a must.

I do believe that you would find a good deal of unrealized revenue if you were able to add this feature. I for one would like to vote for the addition of this features. I have had several clients that need to meet accessibility requirements and although I find Vimeo the best economical and flexible solution, this is where you guys drop the ball and I am unable to recommend your service. Even if you had to charge additional for the capabilities, I believe many of us would be willing to pay.

I'd love to see cc on Vimeo. While "demand" may seem low for a feature like this, there are 6,000,000 people in the US alone who have high/significant hearing impairment. Outlets for cc content are extremely limited as we all know. If Vimeo could develop a cc/subtitle feature I think it could produce huge benefits for both Vimeo and its devoted community. This is not to mention that one of the beauties of Vimeo is that of a global experience. To share content professionally in this manner the option for subtitles are a must.

+1. This feature is essential. Like others have commented, I would also be willing to pay extra for it.

+1 of course, but here's the other thing I hope Vimeo does that YouTube doesn't, which is that the subtitle tracks can (if the video poster allows it) be downloaded by a viewer, changed and ammended, then *REPOSTED* under a different name (an option for which subtitle track to use).

This is for the 'crowdsourcing' of CC subtitling and translation, so a community can contribute to the wider dissemination of a video by assisting in its subtitling (and translation). The video 'owner' can of course show/hide, delete and lock the subtitle track.

What we don't want, of course, is burned in subtitles. Total anathema.

A subject particularly close to my heart, as I've got four videos to subtitle over the weekend (non English speaking audience having difficulties with strong accents), and the next project needs subtitles in 9 European languages.

At the moment, this stuff has to go to YouTube...

+1. I would pay for this feature. It is SO time consuming to add (or amend) subtitles in the video files that I consider switching to another provider, even though I relly like the Vimeo Pro services.

There is no built-in functionality to even add closed-captioning! Please add the option for uploaders to add closed-captions to videos and for users to view them if they wish.

This is basic and wouldn't require Vimeo to caption videos themselves, but would be up to each uploader.

Your software needs to be updated with this functionality please, thank you.

Request first appeared 4 years ago. Until 11 months ago a response by Vimeo staff promised the feature within next year. What's the status now?

It has been a year since Andrew posted that captions will be implemented next year. Any progress?

Hi -- I was really hoping to enjoy this video about 60 Hudson, and had never used Vimeo and I couldnt find any options on here -- I know the creator is responsible for captions, and all that, but I guess I am just chiming in and putting in my vote that Vimeo needs to comply with accessibility standards and regulations, not only because its required but because its common sense. The baby boom generation is on the brink of retirement, and thats going to include a lot of folks with hearing difficulties, if that helps you seal the deal. Regards, Josh

any word on this? sorry just saw the comment above

Shame to see the requests for this feature taking what, over 2 years for you guys to implement... I *love* vimeo and we have a huge project that would be perfect for your new PRO account but we're going to need CC support and will likely not want to move away from another solution like ooyala once we've gotten tons of videos uploaded and transcoded...

This is an important feature and as PRO users we eagerly await its implementation.

+1

You can add closed captions and subtitles to Vimeo using the 3Play Media captions plugin: 3playmedia.com/interactive/captions-plugin/

What's really sad is that captioning - open and closed - has been around since 1973. If Julia Child and national football games could be captioned regularly ever since then, there's no reason for a commercial company to disregard an entire community, ethically or fiscally.

The first Vimeo response, four years ago, with carefully selected words which suggested that Deaf people and their friends and family do it themselves was a real spin doctoring of blowing off the very valid issue and request. Let's hope that once Vimeo does finally do it, they do it right.

I've run into the CC issue as well, with my significant other being deaf. We do look at a lot of videos without dialogue together, but unfortunately can't share in about 90% of the other content in here because of lack of subtitles. I think that it would be nice if people offered subs with their videos, but I've been as guilty as the next person about not uploading my videos with subtitles, and only having them on my computer at home. (File upload limit for free users.) It'd be nice if Vimeo had a moderated approval process for duplicate videos with CC that didn't eat into your weekly upload limit for those of us who are hard of hearing or deaf. Just an idea.

For everyone who cares about captioning: How about more of you switch to using YouTube videos that already has support for captions? That way Vimeo would lose more customers and finally do something about it.

Eric Stoller wrote his newest blog:
insidehighered.com/blogs/dear-vimeo-patience-isnt-option

He says: "Vimeo has been talking about captioning functionality for at least four years. Unfortunately, talk is cheap when you can't hear."

Let's follow his lead and switch from Vimeo to YouTube.

Also, YouTube recently added new features:
youtube-global.blogspot.com/2012/02/captions-for-all-more-options-for-your.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+youtube%2FPKJx+%28YouTube+Blog%29

Including automatically pulling out captions from DVDs and VHS tapes:
"Many of the DVDs and VHS tapes lying around in our vaults and attics--particularly those that were produced by governments and others that care about accessibility of their videos--already have Closed Captions embedded in them. Pulling that information out automatically and making it visible on YouTube means that these videos will continue to be accessible to new generations of viewers."

YouTube is already years ahead of Vimeo, and let's take advantage of their great and useful features.

2 thoughts:
1) For Vimeo - please add! :)
2) For others - remember, Vimeo has cool features youtube doesn't :)

Best,
David

I would really, really like it if Vimeo supported subtitles/closed captioning. This would make Vimeo my only choice for sharing videos online, no doubt about it.

If CC comes this year, ill be PLUS again :)

Yes, CC is really high priority for us, as well. It would change the way we use vimeo (and the scale). In fact I'm very surprised vimeo hasn't prioritised this more as a feature to make video more accessible.

We would be mainly interested in uploading our own caption files (xml format), not automatic transcription.

We had been planning to use Vimeo for a project we're undertaking on behalf of a client who's an agency of NY state. Section 508 compliance is a non-negotiable, absolute requirement for all digital work done on behalf of the state of NY.

Unless we can produce closed-captioning that meets with the approval of their accessibility team, we will not be able to use Vimeo.

+1 for adding closed-captioning. I am starting a large conference video project where the conference organizer is unable to hear spoken words, and so closed-captioning is very important for us. I hope that your work to support this feature is going well -- it will be wonderful to have! =)

I am deaf and find subtitles very useful in many videos. I currently have a tech blog and while all of my videos are in sign language, I do provide subtitles for the hearing folks. While I just started using Vimeo a few weeks ago and really enjoy the clean interface that it provides when comparing to YouTube, I am hesitant to become a PRO member until I see this implemented. I want to use Vimeo exclusively so I hope to see this wonderful feature in the near future.

+1. it is 2012. any updates on timing? We work with education so CC is a must-have. Don't want to go back to YT but might have to...

Instructure: there's an alternative to YouTube for closed captioning: the Internet Archive supports closed captioning: you just add the .srt file in the same "item" where your video is. And the thus closed captions videos embed nicely everywhere. Example: the French kid's song Dame Tartine, with CC subtitles in French and English

Links: archive.org, archive.org/details/DameTartine_992

Closed Captioning shouldn't be a feature that you have to wait several years for. It's basic and necessary. Come on Vimeo - you are so good at so many things. Spend a month of development time to cover the basics.

Also annoyed by the lack of this feature. I have a lot of second language viewers and having english subs so they can understand the video better and have some educational benefits from it is really important. With competitors offering the same feature it seems this would be a bit of a higher priority.

+ 1
I am a pro user + I understand that you don't have the resources of youTube but -
after FOUR YEARS of requests the lack of captioning options is not a 'whoops' but deeply offensive. Accessibility is not an extra, it is a basic civil right.

I definitely would like closed-captioning to be available as well as the ability to upload captioning for multiple languages. Guys, come on...YOUTUBE has it.

I also have been waiting for this feature long looooong time ago. I can understand there's no technical ideal solution on this already, but if you are waiting for a standardized solution on this... well, maybe in 2020 you could make it available. But by that time, most of your users will be gone.

I would like to add my support for closed captions.

As someone who is not d/Deaf, I didn't become aware of the need for closed captions until this year when I lost some of my own hearing, and came across the #captionTHIS campaign (linked video explains it). As some say, a well-made film is one that you can either watch without sound or listen to without picture and still understand the gist of it. But just getting the gist of it isn't "the full picture", and it's unfair and unjust to not have that accessibility for people who want the full experience of many of the utter beautiful films hosted on Vimeo.

Not being aware of captions until recently, my videos are currently not captioned, and I completely recognize the hearing privilege behind that. I personally plan to add open captions to my films so that I can continue to have them on Vimeo. But, not only that is going to be extremely time consuming, it also means that if I want another language track to be added beyond English, I would have to upload a new file for every language. I absolutely love using Vimeo for the community and the privacy customizations available in Plus. I've always recommended Vimeo hands down to anyone wishing to post videos online. Adding closed captioning a la YouTube is simply the right thing to do to, and would definitely encourage me to continue to post my videos here as I begin my captioning adventure.

Thanks for considering and I really hope to hear some good news about this request soon.

Link: youtube.com/watch?v=EgSrZ-s3MTY

You can use VoxcribeCC for captioning your videos.
This new software is a video-speech-recognition captioning editor. In other words, it directly recognizes speech in the video and automatically builds captions with timing information. When the audio quality is fine, it can handle most of the work automatically. You need to correct recognition errors. Then next step is embedding captions into your video before uploading to Vimeo.

Link: voxcribe.com

When is closed captioning coming? It's a basic feature for accessibility. We are trying to provide a service to all people.

+1 from the Swedish green party.

+1 from Oktavilla

I have caption files just give me a way to display them..

We are required by law and conscience to provide closed captioning to all our media. We will likely need to consider YouTube if this doesn't appear in Vimeo's toolbox in 2012.

So its 4 years since the first CC request, and still no CC support? Vimeo! You guys are great BUT youve got to listen to your users (if only we could SPELL it out to you in captions, maybe you would get it). Accesssible content will be the law for all Government agencies in Australia by December 2012. As a company that works mainly with Gov, we prefer vimeo as an alternative to youtube. But if you guys dont support it by then, we will have to say goodbye! This includes taking our pro account too (which is paying your development costs: catch 22). Being a tech company we are surpirsed you dont see the value in constant innovation and change management. Do yuo have a release date for captions yet?

Link: w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

I recently suggested to a major state art gallery here in Australia that they publish their excellent in-house video series to vimeo to reach a different target audience than they currently do on youtube.

Their response was that they would love to do this, but access legislation for government agencies binds them to publishing only on internet sites that support closed captioning.

I'm a great promoter of vimeo and was disappointed with this scenario.

Can you advise if you're actually working on providing this functionality? If/when it does appear, there are a significant number of govt agencies here - not only in the arts - that would have an incentive to buy accounts with vimeo.

We have been doing this series of video at MIT (cambridgenights.media.mit.edu/), and use Vimeo (with a paid account) instead of YouTube to host the videos. We have also been getting requests for captioning, and would be very happy to have the opportunity to caption. The thread evidences the demand for this feature, so I hope it soon becomes one of the Vimeo's new features.

Hello,

We are an association for the deaf, we just register on VIMEO thanks to the high quality video viewing that we are very impressed.

In reading this forum, we are eager to see the functionality of subtitling to materialize ...

As you said it is for the year 2012, draw us know where are you? 80% completion?

Is there somewhere where subscribers can participate in beta testing player?

For deaf and hard of hearing community in different countries Thank you and support you a good continuation of this very important project.

+1 for subtitles and/or captions. we'd upload our own rather than use automatic audio recognition and transcription. We are stuck with using streaming links and third party players because we can't use videos without captions. and of course we use YouTube when we need to be quick.

It's been over 4 years now and you still cannot implement the simple captioning feature??

Anyone using Vimeo - please switch to YouTube videos. They not only have captioning feature, but also makes it easy to add and edit captions. Thanks!

Its amazing, in my company we have to put all our videos in youtube because this lack of support for subtitles... PLEASE VIMEO PLEASE... at least answer something... and by the way we have a PRO (JA) account... but again, we dont use it at all!!

+1 for subtitles and captions. As a non-english user I would like to have optional subtitles on my videos for english viewers.

VIMEO staff, can we please get a descent reply on this from one of the managing directors?

VIMEO is the best video hosting platform.

Closed Captions is THE ONLY efficient way to subtitle your video.

ANY OTHER WAY creates problems.

Embedding captions within the video is a "3rd world" approach, as
1) video viewers are obligated to have them
2) the uploader would have to upload the same video multiple times to have different language
captions
3) it takes more time for content creators
4) it is not as easy to make changes if needed, as the video has to be deleted and uploaded again, under a new url, blablabla.

On the other hand, enabling the CC feature alike youtube and Daily Motion should be a very easy task for VIMEO developers.

So why do we have to ask for this? And give you clues?

Why can't you just have it from day one or day two?

I had to use youtube for a series of videos I should have on VIMEO.

Please:

- Enable the CC feature
- Announce an average date asap

Thanks!

Link: youtube.com/watch?v=cd7sateuzCQ

This is disappointing. I do a lot of work with Australian Government agencies who are all using YouTube to host video and have no alternatives due to this months WCAG requirement deadline.

Link: webguide.gov.au/accessibility-usability/accessibility/

+1 from us.

Link: princeton.edu

We need close caption support, right now. I can code it for you you'd just have to add the code. It's so simple to do I don't get it. What are you doing, guys? Seriously, 5 years to develop a feature YouTube has perfectly added since years... This is a shame.

+1 for this.

Hi,
Glad to hear you're still working on it ! Looking forward to seeing it in action really, really soon!

Vimeo Staff - you keep saying you would implement the captioning feature "soon". How "soon"? It's been 5 years! Also, can you involve deaf and hard of hearing people to test the feature?

"After last week's announcement that Vimeo is available in French and German, we downed a glass or five of the finest vin rouge while pondering a page or five of Proust. We gorged on bratwurst while waving Handstick in the air to some bangin' German techno. Then we thought about the French and German exports we get properly excited about, and we got down to serious business."

vimeo.com/blog/post:547

Are French and German versions more important than captioning feature that is required as part of web accessibility????

Matt - I had to reply in the blog post about German and French because it made deaf feel that they are less important than German and French. Could you have put French and German versions on hold until after accessibility versions are added to Vimeo - that way you would spend more time and energy on accessibility first? As I said in that blog post, accessibility is to be put on a higher priority than internationalization. Also, as some programmers in this thread stated, it's not that difficult to implement captioning feature in Vimeo. YouTube has already enabled it years ago. Shame on Vimeo for neglecting users with disabilities and keeping making up excuses.

Matt - Eric wrote a blogpost, “Dear Vimeo, Patience Isn’t An Option.” He was surprised to find out that Harvard and some other universities use Vimeo for videos and tried to discourage them via Twitter from using it due to the lack of captioning feature. Vimeo replied: “This is something we are working on. Thanks for your patience!” Eric said: “For the deaf community, captions on a video are crucial to gaining access to content. Vimeo has been talking about captioning functionality for at least four years. Unfortunately, talk is cheap when you can’t hear.”

Eric is damn right - talk is cheap indeed. It's easy for you to say because you can hear, but not 50 millions of deaf and hard of hearing Americans and hundreds millions more in the world! And it's not just those people who benefit from captions, but many others like foreign language learners and remedial readers.

Comments from Vimeo staff on this page clearly show that they care more about foreign language speakers (i.e. to make more international versions) than about people with disabilities (i.e. to make more accessible versions).

Many millions of people who need captions can no longer afford to wait for captions (regardless of their hearing abilities). Captioning feature is as important as sound button - they both should be enabled in all videos!

Can you try to turn off sounds on your computer and see what it feels like to understand videos without sound and without captions? Try that not for one minute, but for a full day - to get the idea of how many millions deaf and hard of hearing people feel when browsing inaccessible websites!

I'm getting battered by hearing people about the lack of captions on my own videos.

I'd love to be a beta tester when you release it.

Provided that your 'coming soon' was mentioned two months ago, it should be anytime now?

I share the frustrations with other users, even from 5 years ago.

Can you at least throw in a bone and give us an idea "how soon" it would be -- within the next month, 2 months or the year?

No announcement of CC at NAB this year. Most likely this means it won't be coming out anytime soon.

And let us know whether we will need our own caption files or if it will be auto, or both...

I'm getting battered by hearing people about the lack of captions on my own videos.
I'd love to be a beta tester when you release it.

Link: ytequandoi.vn/

This is a must have. Youtube, Dailymotion, Blip and so on already have CC for a long time. It's the only thing missing on Vimeo. I hope it'll come soon!