Not only are transcripts and captions critical for accessibility, but they also help make long-form content more digestible for your audience and contribute to SEO optimization.

Captions and transcripts go hand-in-hand in Wistia, but there are fundamental differences between them:

Captions and transcripts are connected in Wistia; changes made to a transcript will be applied to the corresponding captions and vice versa.

All current Wistia plans include free computer-generated transcripts and captions.

To order a new transcript, click "Generate transcript" on the media page.

In the order modal, you'll be prompted to select the transcript type and language.

Transcript prices and turnaround times vary based on your selection:

Transcripts cannot be applied to multiple existing videos in bulk. However, you can enable automatic transcript ordering for future uploads in your account settings. This setting applies only to videos uploaded after it's turned on, not to your existing library.

If you have an existing SRT or VTT file for your video, open the ellipsis menu and select "Upload". You can upload as many caption files as you'd like.

From here, drag and drop files or click "Select files." We'll automatically detect the language and notify you of any formatting errors upon uploading.

Once uploaded and validated, click "Save."

If you're having trouble uploading a custom captions file, check out our troubleshooting guide for failed captions uploads.

If certain words in your media might be more difficult to transcribe (e.g., acronyms, industry terms, product names), you can add a list of keywords to your account. Scroll down to the "Keywords glossary" section of your Account Settings page to add known terms for computer-generated transcripts.

Once complete, click "Save Changes."

Once you've added a transcript to your video, you'll have the option to enable captions by default for your viewers. From your media page, click "Customize" and navigate to the Controls section. Here, select your default captions behavior.

If enabled by default, captions will be visible on the screen for all viewers. If set to off by default, viewers will need to enable captions manually via the CC button in the play bar.

In the transcript section of your media page, click "Edit" to correct any spelling or transcript errors.

Click "Save" to apply your changes to the transcript and captions.

Open the ellipsis menu to access multiple options for your transcripts and captions.

Need to adjust the timing of words or phrases in your captions? Click on the ellipsis menu and select "Correct captions timing" to open the editor.

If you have transcript files in multiple languages, you can select which one you’d like to edit. Click into the dropdown menu to select your desired language.

From here, you can move words around your timeline as necessary, extend how long they’ll display, and customize any line breaks in the text. Select a specific word to adjust it, or click your desired point in the timeline.

The bars above each group of text can be used to control:

The carriage return icon can be dragged to determine where line breaks should appear.

If you make any mistakes, click "Undo" or "Redo." To remove a line break, select it and click "Delete." Click the keyboard to view keyboard shortcuts.

To exit the captions editor without making changes, click "Cancel." If you’re ready to save your changes, click "Save."

Viewers can customize caption settings to their preference from the play bar.

To customize caption settings, click into the captions menu from the play bar and select "Captions settings."

Here, you can adjust several settings for how your captions appear in your video.

The following settings can be customized:

Selected settings will be saved automatically for that browser session. If you change your mind, scroll down to the bottom of the modal and click "Reset to defaults."

If you’re working with multilingual captions, we’ll supply the captions that match the language of your viewer’s browser. If those captions aren’t available, we’ll serve English captions by default.

When viewers enable captions and select a language on a video, their selections will be saved for all future viewing sessions on the same domain. With these preferences saved, viewers will only need to enable captions once in a learning course, video series, or a Wistia Channel. Caption settings will not persist across other browsers or devices.

Interactive transcripts allow viewers to navigate to different parts of your media by scrolling through or searching the captions file. Open the captions menu from the play bar and select “Search Video" to search for keywords or phrases.

You'll then see a search bar appear in the player.

Below the media, the transcript will also highlight each word as it is spoken. Click on any word to navigate to that point of the media.

To create a new translation of your transcript from directly within Wistia, click the language dropdown menu and select "Manage localizations."

From here, "Text translation only". Search for or select your desired language from the dropdown menu and click "Create text translation."

You can then select which language you’d like to view as captions in your video by clicking the captions icon on the play bar.

When downloading a video on the media page, there will be a checkbox to "Include available captions" for any existing transcripts. Check this option to download an asset with captions. Uncompressed media files cannot be downloaded with captions.

Open the downloaded file in your media player of choice and select the captions track you'd like to display.

To download a transcript, click into the "Transcript" tab, select which language you'd like to download, and choose your desired file format:

You can also copy the transcript text from this modal. It will copy in the format you have selected. Multiple transcript languages must be downloaded separately.

When you delete a video's translation, both the transcript and captions in that language will be removed. In order to do so, in the dropdown menu of the Transcript section, select "Manage localizations."

In the "Manage localizations" modal, click the ellipsis menu, then select "Delete." Confirm your decision in the pop-up window.

Once done, that language will be removed from your video.

Player controls will be translated automatically based on the viewer's caption or dub language selection. For example, if you enable French captions in the player, all text in the player, including speed and quality controls, Chapters, Wistia Forms, etc., will also be translated to French.

If player translations are not available for a specific caption language, we'll default to English.

When you search for content in your account, this will surface any related transcripts.

You can also filter search results to include only transcripts. In the search modal, click “Transcript Only - Beta.” Your search results will be limited to transcript content only.

Click "Transcript only - Beta" again to expand search results to titles, descriptions, tags, and more.