Quick answer
Caption spoken words and any meaningful sound that viewers need to understand the clip. Use automatic transcription as a draft, then listen and correct it. A final pass on a phone will catch problems with timing, size, and placement that are easy to miss in a large editing preview.
Review the words against the audio
Start by checking details that change the meaning: names, prices, product terms, dates, and negations. Imagine a speaker says, “You don’t need approval for a draft.” A caption that drops “don’t” tells the audience the opposite. Check which person is speaking if there are two voices and the speaker isn’t visible. If a demonstration relies on a sound, such as an alert tone that tells a user the order went through, describe it in the caption when it occurs. W3C’s caption guidance gives examples of when non-speech audio belongs in the text.
Break lines where the thought breaks
Read the caption as a viewer sees it. Keep closely related words together, and avoid a line break that makes a phrase confusing for a moment. In a talking-head clip, use a text style with enough contrast over both light and dark shots. If the video shows a graph, keep captions away from the labels the speaker is discussing. Review playback in the intended app as well as your editing preview. A caption that looks centered in the editor can land under controls once the clip is posted.
Keep a version you can correct later
Save the corrected caption text or timed caption file alongside the clean video. Where the destination supports a separate caption track, that gives viewers a way to control its display. Visible captions built into the picture can help when text must always appear, but changing a spelling mistake means exporting the video again. Check that an automatic track doesn’t double the text if the video already includes visible captions. Finally, watch the clip muted and ask whether the main point and the final action still make sense without guessing what the speaker said.
Key takeaways
- Check meaning-changing details first.
- Preview captions on a phone in the intended app.
- Save the corrected text with the video.