Adding subtitles to YouTube videos

[DD1]

Good evening Builders,

Is there an easy way to add subtitles to YT videos? Here's my current workflow:

1. upload the video,
2. paste title and tags from a text file, upload the custom thumbnail, and save it as a draft,
3. reopen creator studio in a separate tab,
4. click on Edit Video from the main screen,
5. then go to Subtitles/CC,
6. click on Add New Subtitles,
7. select language,
8. upload transcript,
9. click Set Timings,
10. then come back to the original tab, and FINALLY publish the video.

The bolded section feels stupid to me. Today, as I was publishing another video and doing all of the above, I decided to post a topic here and ask: is there an easier way? Am I missing something here?

Thank you all.

 

[Samwise89]

What I used to do was upload the video and let Youtube do the transcription the way they thought it was. This would get time stamps attached for me. Then I'd download the closed captions and edit them to be correct (time stamps were fine, just needed to correct screwed up words), and reupload.

 

[DD1]

What I used to do was upload the video and let Youtube do the transcription the way they thought it was. This would get time stamps attached for me. Then I'd download the closed captions and edit them to be correct (time stamps were fine, just needed to correct screwed up words), and reupload.

In this case, I'm forced to add the subtitles manually because the videos are not narrated.

I don't care much about the timing of the captions because all the words I'm adding are already on the video itself. I also don't need to transcribe anything because I can simply of copy and paste the script from a text file I already have.

The reason I'm bothering with adding the subtitles is to teach the algorithm what my video is about -- other than the video title and tags, plus watch lists.

It's a youtube SEO experiment I'm making while I'm uploading videos this month. My watch time has increased by 55.9% in my most viewed video in comparison with the previous period by simply adding captions. And I'll say it again: my videos don't even have narration! My captions are keyword- and LSI-rich by nature, so there's no need to stuff anything there, however it looks like it could be an exploitable feature.

Even though my channel is still too small to make conclusions and this is such a small sample, so far it seems worth my time to spend the extra minutes in adding the captions.

If anyone knows a less clumsy way of doing that, I'm all ears. (Other than narrating my videos, that is.)

Thanks @Samwise89 for the answer

 

[DKurtz.me]

Bought some software that does that off of JVZoo. LingoBlaster, I believe is the name.

Automates steps 3-10 in your original post, boils it down to a minute, and does 10 languages for you at a clip.

So all in all, I think it comes to like 100 language possibilities/combinations, translates the title/description, and then does CC in multiple languages for you.

I'm havin' a field day with it, and it makes larger reach possible in a snap. I've seen old videos start getting massive traction based on this and just hitting the major languages first. Like having average views jump from 10-15/day to 120-200+/day on one video.

No idea what it costs now, but for me it was worth every penny since I'm making 20-30 minute videos every week, and putting audio podcasts into video format as well for cross-market saturation. On top of this, I'm having interview podcasts transcribed for me as well for the CC portion of the videos.

Yeah, I realize the product is probably WaFo quality, but I don't have to pay for the translate API requests, or do it myself manually anymore, so it just makes my actual time doing it that much less. This will probably become a VA task in the near future as well, I'd rather continue to service my clients as opposed to doing grunt work in which half the grunt has been made automatic in this scenario anyhow.

I'd love to hear how it goes for you.