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Can Closed captions stop appearing when speech ends?

Is it possible to have a closed caption appear and then be replaced at the time marker with a blank caption, rather than it having to bring up the next caption. It seems that once the first caption starts, there always must be a caption on the screen.

Answers

  • Hi Mark,

    There is no way to create a blank caption; however, using the Panopto Editor, you could edit the time stamp of the caption's appearance to delay it by selecting the dropdown menu icon to its right, and then "Edit."

    And then editing when it appears:


    Alternatively, at the point in the video where you want the caption to delay, you could add in a character such as an em dash ( – ) in the "Enter a caption" textbox, located underneath the captions in the editor:


    If you have any additional questions, please feel free to ask - we're always happy to help!

    Best wishes,

    Cait

  • @Cait McCabe The problem here is more that in Panopto the "end time" for a specific caption line is not respected. This is really something that needs to be addressed from an accessibility standpoint at some point. It isn't really a priority IMHO because the captions are all displayed, they are just displayed a bit incorrectly.

    I would love to see some improvements to how captions are edited in Panopto as it is quite the task today. Having something like this (https://support.rev.com/hc/en-us/articles/360036052731-Using-the-Caption-Editor), where the editing tasks can all be done from the keyboard, and a better GUI around what caption line is showing where on the timeline would be greatly appreciated. (I have a draft feature request somewhere)

    What I've done when I need to add in blank space is include "[silence]" or describe the audio at the time (the style of music playing, [fan whirring]) and while that works in some cases, and some of that makes for a better caption track, it isn't "correct" in all cases.

  • Hi @Michael Espey,

    Thanks so much for the additional context and suggestions. This would definitely be a great Feature Request - I did look through the current list of captioning-related requests, and it doesn't look like this particular issue is addressed. I would encourage you, or @Mark Fisher, to consider adding it in: New Feature Request.

    Best wishes,

    Cait

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