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Thoughts Regarding the Use of Subtitles in Videos

 

Videos are a great way of getting Bible stories out to people, including children. If the audience is literate, it is often a good idea to include subtitles with videos. Even if they are functionally illiterate, it might make sense to include them, so as to encourage growth in literacy amongst the group. In YouTube it is possible to add these later in YouTube Studio. You can also allow others to add subtitles for their language, if you wish. For social media platforms like Facebook it is often better to hardcode the subtitles onto the video. If you are using a program like Shotcut this is not possible. You have to download another program that has this option e.g. Filmora (though this needs to be paid for) and Kdenlive (free and open source). If you want a program that is easy to use, go for Filmora over Kdenlive, as the former has a really nice user interface.

The reason we want to include subtitles is that people sitting on a bus, or in a waiting room, or somewhere like that, want to watch short videos on YouTube and other platforms without having to listen to the audio. There is usually an option to turn sound off within the program, and many users have this set to no audio by default. If they get really interested in a video, they might plug in their ear buds and turn on the sound. Might. 

The received wisdom on length of videos is that longer ones need to go on YouTube. If you only have short videos, other platforms are fine. You can put them on YouTube as well.

It is possible to create the subtitles in YouTube, by copying and pasting from Paratext or similar Bible program, then editing them to get rid of punctuation marks. Videos with quote marks and so on are not popular with viewers. It is possible to download the subtitles and timings in a settings file such as an .srt file. This can then be imported into Kdenlive or Filmora to create a video with hardcoded subtitles. The reason to use YouTube is that Studio is a really convenient subtitle editor - much better than the ones you'll find in Filmora or Kdenlive. Shotcut doesn't allow subtitles, unfortunately.

The really useful feature in YouTube is that viewers can turn subtitles on and off at will, change the language, and even speed up the video, whether or not they are reading the subtitles or listening to the audio. This can probably be done in other programs but I haven't tried it myself.

All in all, try and make the videos appropriate for the chosen (target) audience. It's no good going to all the work of creating subtitles when 99% of your audience can't read.

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