However, both of them help you to connect to a worldwide audience. Which you should use in your video content between closed captions and subtitles depends on the audience you are trying to reach. Which you should use: Closed Captions vs Subtitles? This can also contribute to your video content’s audience expansion which can drive more revenue. Since these text versions of your videos allow the search engines to crawl your content rather than the video title and the descriptions. Subtitles and captions also play a special role in SEO these days. For example, in 2020 89% of youtube users were from outside of the US while 51% of users claimed they visited Youtube daily. Most social media platforms such as Youtube and even online learning platforms such as Udemy add captions to their content(and recommend adding captions or subtitles) to help the video owners reach more viewers.
For example, the Korean movie Parasite won an Oscar in 2020 and the Squid Game Korean drama grabbed an audience from all over the world, that wouldn’t have been possible without subtitles.
Many foreign movies and tv shows receiving awards and grabbing worldwide audiences seem to be proof of that. Various industries benefit from using closed captions and subtitles, especially the Entertainment industry. This would be helpful with the ROI of your business if you spend any money on video ads. They also have auto-generated caption options you could use. Facebook’s internal tests have shown that their video ads view time had a 12% viewer engagement increase when captions were used. As for the outside US content creators can also grab the attention of a wider audience using English subtitles or closed captions in their videos.Ĭaptions and subtitles can increase video viewer engagement. Subtitles take this to the next level by making the content available in many languages which drives the audience from other countries that do not use the video language as the mother language. Also, viewers who have trouble processing speech and auditory components would be able to use closed captions to get the most out of the video content. They help with content improvement, SEO, audience engagement, video retention, and audience expansion.Ĭlosed captions can help reach a wider audience since it helps people who have difficulties understanding the video due to hearing impairment. Why Use Closed Captions or Subtitles in Your Videos?Ĭaptions and subtitles are invaluable tools that many businesses use in their videos today. SDH subtitles are used where closed captions are not available. SDH subtitles are in the language as the video is being spoken and do include the special effects, speaker identification, and other nonspeech elements as well in the subtitles. Those are called SDH subtitles are otherwise known as Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. However, there is one special type of subtitle that has the same purpose as the closed caption. For an instance, subtitles do not include special effects or other nonspeech elements within the captions. Subtitles do not act like closed captions. Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Due to the similarities, captions and subtitles have captions that are also called subtitles outside of the US. Although if the subtitle is not burned to the video, the option to turn it off in media players would be available.
Subtitles however assume that the viewer hears the audio and they do not include special effects and noises as notification.Ĭlosed captions can be turned off or on by the will of the user, but with the subtitles broadcasted on TV, you do not have that option. So, closed captions include special effects, speaker IDs, and other no speech elements rather than just the dialog. They are usually created for people who have hearing difficulties to understand the content better. And subtitles are also considered a form of open captioning which refers to the nonhidden nature of the text.Ĭlosed captions are very similar but they have one difference, that’s closed captions are in the same language as the audio. Subtitles have been a great help for people to understand and even learn another language rather than their mother language.
subtitles are available in many languages which translates the original text into different languages which helps reach a wider audience. However, there is one thing different about them. 5 The Bottom Line The Difference Between Closed Caption vs Subtitlesīoth closed captions and subtitles are a text version of a video or an audio file, which can be played with the video/audio file.