What you need to know about Closed vs. Open Captions

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So, what is the difference?

There are many ways to tackle subtitling your social media videos that may not have occurred to you, using either closed or open captions. By using closed captions viewers can turn them on or off as they are part of an SRT file that can be uploaded alongside a video. These plain text captions won’t have the freedom of custom styling within Captionista but can still be styled to a certain extent in the iOS settings app (Accessibility > Subtitles & Captioning). For people with accessibility needs this means they can still be styled to fit their preferences.

Having captions on all of your videos is really important, however that doesn’t mean they need to be there all the time if not required by the viewer. Closed captions are a really useful option if your content doesn’t rely on them but you want to give people the option to control their viewing experience if they have visual or perception issues. They are also easier to edit and re-upload if needed, meaning you won’t have to take down the video and post again if there is something in the text you want to change, as the SRT file is separate from the video.

The other option is open captions which are embedded in to the video and can be styled to suit your aesthetic in apps like Captionista. They cannot be turned off by viewers. Captionista gives you complete freedom over your choice of open caption styling which can help you create a consistent look to all of your social media videos. Open captions are a great option for creators who want to have a distinct style to their social media posts and create eye-catching captions.

Why caption videos yourself?

We know it must be tempting to use the auto-generated captions feature in apps like TikTok as they are quick and easy to do. But, by doing this you can lose the interest of people relying on these captions. Badly structured long lines of text disengage viewers as the natural flow and cadence of speech is lost. However this can all be avoided by putting in a little time in an app like Captionista to either create your own open/closed captions which will ensure your subtitling style is clear and unique.