Easy Video Captioning in PowerPoint

As a practitioner of flipped pedagogy, I've been moving more of my short lectures to video format, so that students can view them before class. Then we can jump right into working on texts and problems in class. Screen-capturing a PowerPoint is one way to do this.

To make the videos fully accessible to learners who are deaf and hard of hearing, I am adding closed-captioning. A transcript really can't do the trick because it forces readers to go back and forth between texts.

Captioning can be added to videos after they are complete in Wevideo online editor, in Vimeo, or in PowerPoint, among other options. But I found that for me an even easier way was to add captioning BEFORE I created the video, and then to use the captioning as my script as a I discuss the slides.

Adding Captioning Before Capturing Video

1. On a slide, create a plain text box. Format it's background color to black and the text color to white.

2. Move it to the bottom of the slide, so that you can ensure it doesn't block other visual information.

3. Select and copy that box. Paste it on every slide in which you will be recording your voice.

4. Add your typed text to each box.

5. You'll want about 3 lines of text max on each slide, so if you need more, duplicate the slide and continue with new text. When the video plays, it will seamlessly continue without creating a blip between the two slides that are identical save the captioning text.

6. Begin your screencast (you can use software such as QuickTime on Mac or Screencast-O-Matic online). As you flip through the PowerPoint slides on your screen, you will be able to read the captioning like a script.

Example Video with Text Box Captioning

Introductions from Anne-Marie Womack on Vimeo.