Kaltura - How to edit captions in Kaltura MediaSpace

This document describes how users can edit SRT captions for media in Kaltura to improve their accuracy, before displaying your captions


This document assumes that you are starting from logging in to Kaltura MediaSpace. If you are coming from the document on ordering machine captions you can start at step 7. This document only provides an overview of editing capabilities. More detailed instructions are available in Kaltura's Editing Captions - REACH v2 document.While the assumption is you are editing machine captions you can also edit other captions uploaded to Kaltura MediaSpace.

Early testing shows that it takes between 2-4 times the length of the media to correct machine captions to 99% accuracy. Please refer to and use the captioning key as a guide on how to format your captions. Minimally you should indicate who is speaking and use proper punctuation. Ideally you should also include any relevant information conveyed by ambient sound, vocal tone, and describe anything written in the video as well.

Be sure to click Save button in the upper right occasionally as you are editing your captions. Don't start working on captions and leave to come back later and continue working. The editor is not like Google Docs - it doesn't autosave. Your session will time out after about three hours and will lose your edits if you don't save. Remember to save often to avoid losing work.

  1. Launch Chrome or Firefox, go to Kaltura MediaSpace, and login: mediaspace.wisc.edu. If you need more information on how to log in to MediaSpace please see Kaltura - How to Log in to Kaltura MediaSpace (UW-Madison) .
  2. Click on your name or the person silhouette icon in the upper right corner and click My Media:
    Screenshot showing the user having clicked their user icon in Kaltura MediaSpace with the cursor hovering over the drop-down menu option "My Media".
  3. Search for or scroll until you find the media whose captions you want to edit.
  4. Click on the thumbnail of the media item you want to edit captions.
  5. Click the Actions drop-down menu and select Captions & Enrich:
    A screenshot showing the user having clicked on "Actions" and hovering over "Captions & Enrich" which is outlined in orange.
  6. If your machine captions are done processing the Captions Requests window will look like this:
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  7. Click the pencil icon in the Captions Requests window:
    A detail screenshot from the "Captions requests" area of the screen. The pencil icon is outlined in orange.     
  8. The Closed Captions Editor screen will display. See Exploring the Closed Captions Editor, below, for an overview of the different options on the screen.
  9. When you are done editing captions, Kaltura - How to display captions for media in Kaltura MediaSpace

    Exploring the Closed Captions Editor

    Keyboard shortcuts for the Closed Captions Editor:
    Player seek 5 seconds backwards: Ctrl ←
    Player seek to start of media: Windows - Home | Mac - Command ←
    Player pause-play toggle: Spacebar
    Player seek 5 seconds forward: Ctrl →
    A screenshot showing the Kaltura Closed Captions Editor.
    1. Captions drop-down menu: Allows you to select from multiple caption files that may be associated with your media entry.
    2. Search field: Allows you to search for specific text within your captions and replace it with other text. Don't search for a specific term without entering something in the replace field or it will delete the term assuming you want to replace the term you are searching for with a blank space!
    3. Replace With field: Allows you to search for a specific term (from #2) and then replace it with another term you enter here.
    4. Replace button: Replaces all instances of the term you search (#2) for with the term you enter in the replace field (#3). There is no option to approve or deny specific replacements - they all happen automatically.
    5. Add speaker to selected items: Allows you to select a caption (the radio box indicated by #7), enter a speaker's name in this field and then click #6 Add to add a speaker indicator to the selected caption.
    6. Add button: Completes the action of adding a speaker you entered in #5 to the selected captions.
    7. Caption checkbox: Each caption has a checkbox next to it to indicate that the caption is selected for the Add speaker to selected items (#5) action.
    8. Caption start time: The time the caption text will start displaying to the user. You can click in this field to edit the start time for a caption.
    9. Caption end time: The time the caption text will stop displaying to the user. You can click in this field to edit the stop time for a caption.
    10. Caption text: Click into the caption text to edit it.
    11. Trash-can button: Click to remove the caption.
    12. Add or + button: Mouse over the area between two captions for the + to display. Click to add a caption between the two captions. The line above is duplicated with the text [COPY] prepended and may be edited.
    13. Playback and skip back and ahead buttons:
    14. Autoscroll checkbox: Checking will auto scroll the text when playing the media entry.
    15. Revert link: Reverts to the last saved changes.
    16. Save button: Save the modified caption file. Use the save button with some regularity to avoid losing your edits.
    17. Back link: Returns to the media entry in Kaltura MediaSpace. You will receive a warning to the effect of "Changes you made may not be saved" and you will need to click Leave if you have edited captions that have not been saved.

The suffix of "(auto-generated)" is appended to the label of all machine-generated captions. This suffix informs viewers and media owners that the captions were automatically generated by Kaltura's machine captioning process, and have not been edited.

For all machine captions generated prior to February 24, 2021 -- which have not, yet, been edited for accuracy -- we recommend you edit the label and manually add the suffix "(auto-generated)".

Once an auto-generated caption file has been edited for accuracy, we recommended you remove that suffix from the label.

For instruction on editing caption labels, refer to the document in the See Also section (below).

See Also: