Participatory Culture Foundation

Thank you for your question, Abby.

Subtitles made on Amara are closed caption subtitles, i.e. they are hosted in a text file that is synchronized with the video, not burned in the video.And the videos that play on Amara are only being streamed to it from their original location.

So in general (1), you have to download

• the subtitle file from Amara (that's easy, there is a download link in all subtitle pages) and
  
• the video file from its original location (indicated in the URLs tab of the main Amara page for the video).
  This can be trickier if it is on a platform that hides the actual URL of the video file, like YouTube, but it's still feasible, for instance using the Download Helper browser extension (for Firefox and for Chrome)
  

Then with some video editing programs - Camtasia, Adobe Premiere Pro - you can burn the subtitle file into the video.

I've never done that, though. I find it simpler to put both files in the same folder, giving them the same main name, and then play them with a player software that supports subtitles, like the multimedia free and open source VLC player, and play both together.

I hope this helps a bit?

Claude Almansi

(1) One exception (that I know of): if the video you made the subtitles for is a TED talk, you can look it up on TED.com. In the video played there, the dowload feature allows you to burn the subtitles of your choice into it.

 

Thank you for your question, Jony. Have you tried the way I described above? Or are there things you don't understand in my description?

Best,

Claude Almansi

 

Thank you, chin woo.