About
Kaltura’s captioning and enrichment services, powered by the Reach framework, provide a wide range of accessibility and content enhancement options, from captions and translations to advanced enrichment features.
By improving accessibility and inclusivity, Reach helps everyone engage with video content, whether for better understanding, watching on mute, or consuming media in another language.
To set up Reach on your account, contact your Kaltura representative.
Benefits of Reach
✔ Easy management and control - One centralized services dashboard allows you to easily manage your budget and track requests. Visit our article Moderating Services Requests and General Statistics for more information.
✔ Customizable and automated processes - Reach includes a full end-to-end process for caption ordering and return. Ordering rules, moderation workflows, and permissions can be tailored to your needs. See Reach Profiles and Services for more information.
✔ Unified solution - The workflow is the same across all Kaltura's applications, so it doesn't matter whether your in Video Portal, the KMC or one of our LMS Video integrations. The experience is the same whether your video was created in Kaltura or uploaded from another source - once uploaded, your video benefits from the same captions editor and transcript widget.
✔ Reports - You have the option to obtain usage and billing reports, and you can also download the relevant information.
✔ Compliance with security and privacy - Customers can request that the service provider delete their content once the captions have been completed, or alternatively, they can specify a desired timeframe during which the content will be retained before deletion.
✔ DPA (Data processing agreement) & GDPR compliant - Reach services comply with data protection and privacy regulations.
To learn about Kaltura’s approach to responsible AI, see Kaltura’s Artificial Intelligence Principles.
Reach includes several service categories, each designed to support different accessibility, localization, and enrichment needs. The sections below describe each service and when to use it.
Captioning and transcription services
These services create or synchronize transcripts and captions for your media, improving accessibility, searchability, and compliance.
Captions
Machine (ASR)
This AI-based service provides quick, searchable video transcripts with an average 85% accuracy and a turnaround time of up to two hours. Users can edit the transcript and resubmit for alignment. The engine improves over time, and custom vocabularies can be added for industry-specific terms.
Top use cases for machine captioning:
- Immediate transcripts needed within minutes of upload (for example, call centers)
- Consistent speakers, such as university faculty
- Language with specialized terms, idioms, or domain-specific vocabulary
- Clear speaker audio without background noise
Please note that captions are not the same as translations (subtitles). They provide text for the spoken dialogue in the same language as the video.
Professional
This is a service that leverages professional human transcribers to provide full-service captioning with 99% accuracy. Additionally, the captions will be fully compliant with closed captioning standards and accessibility requirements, as well as media publishing expectations. Turnaround time ranges from 3 hours to 48 hours, depending on your selected service level. It's recommended to use this service for your public-facing, external videos, including marketing, learning, and training.
Top use cases for professional captioning:
- Accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Support for reading and literacy challenges
- Expanding reach to multilingual viewers
- Interactive transcript experience
- Closed captions for TV and media compliance
See Order captions in Video Portal or Order captions in KMC for ordering information.
When transcripts are available (for example, after ordering captions), viewers can open the transcript panel in the player to read and navigate the video content. Selecting text in the transcript jumps to the corresponding point in the video. For more information, see Transcript plugin.
Live captions
Provide real-time, machine-generated captions in the speaker's language for any scheduled event. You can easily enable this through the Events platform, Video Portal, or KMC.
See Order live captions & live translations in Video Portal or Order live captions & live translations in KMC for ordering information.
Alignment
The Alignment service lets you upload a transcript file, and Reach automatically synchronizes ("aligns") the text with the audio in your video.
See Order alignment in Video Portal or Order alignment in KMC for ordering information.
Translation and localization services
Translations
Reach supports three translation options:
Option 1: Automatic translation - Reach will automatically create subtitles in another language based on your video’s audio. Good for when you want a quick, simple translation and don’t need perfect word-for-word accuracy.
Option 2: Upload your own captions file and have it translated - If you already have a captions file, you can upload it and Reach will translate it into another language. Your file must be at least 99% accurate for the translation to be reliable. Accepted file types: SRT, DFXP, or VTT.
Option 3: Order professional captions first, then translate - If you want the best accuracy, use Reach to create professional, human-made captions, then translate that file into another language.
Please note that only one of the above options can be used per translation request.
See Order translations in Video Portal or Order translations in KMC for ordering information.
Live translations
Provide real-time, machine-generated subtitles in a different language from the speaker. You can add this service to any scheduled event via the Events platform, Video Portal, or KMC.
See Order live captions & live translations in Video Portal or Order live captions & live translations in KMC for ordering information.
Dubbing
Dubbing lets you add translated audio to your video using machine-based services. The final audio is generated using text-to-speech technology and synced to the original dialogue.
See Order dubbing in Video Portal or Order dubbing in KMC for ordering information.
Accessibility services
Standard audio description
Also known simply as 'audio description', this service combines the original video audio with spoken narration of key visual details such as actions, text, and scenes. It’s ideal for videos with natural pauses or minimal dialogue. Available in English. The turnaround time depends on your account plan.
See Order audio description in Video Portal or Order audio description in KMC for ordering information.
Extended audio description
Also known as 'advanced audio description', this service pauses the video as needed to allow for more detailed narration, then resumes playback. This process may occur multiple times throughout the video. It is best suited for videos with dense visual content or limited natural pauses.
Extended audio description uses speech synthesis to generate narration from a time-coded VTT file. Speech Synthesis is supported by most browsers. You can check your browser compatibility of speech synthesis API at lambdatest.com.
It requires the extended audio description plugin in the Kaltura player and must be enabled on your account (contact your CSM).
See Order extended audio description in Video Portal or Order extended audio description in KMC for ordering information.
For setup instructions, see Extended audio description plugin.
Content enrichment services
Chaptering
This is an AI-based video service that creates chapters for a video. The chapters are reviewed by professionals and added as content metadata, just like creating manual chapters. The service is available in English only; the turnaround time is 24 hours.
See Order chaptering in Video Portal or Order chaptering in KMC for ordering information.
FAQs
What languages can I order captions in?
Supported languages depend on the selected Reach vendor. Please contact your Kaltura representative for more information.
Do I have to pay separately for each language or are the non-English package(s) all-inclusive?
To determine pricing for captioning your media in more than one additional language, please contact your Kaltura representative.
Can I edit captions I uploaded (not generated by REACH)?
Yes. Kaltura's caption editor supports all captions, created by Reach or uploaded by the customer.
Can I resubmit a Reach request?
Yes. You can resubmit Reach requests in certain cases, such as when the media has been updated or when new Reach profile settings apply. For details on when and how to resubmit a request, see our article Resubmissions for Kaltura captioning & enrichment services.
What are credits?
Credits represent the billing currency used for Reach services. Credits are defined in your Reach profile, and your account may have one or multiple profiles..
If I want English and non-English services, do I need to purchase more than one package?
For information on pricing and packages for both English and Non-English captioning and language services, please contact your Kaltura representative.
Why should I caption my media?
Kaltura REACH captions give you a complete textual database of your video library. The index, caption, and transcript data created for your media extends audience reach and enables your content to be searchable.
How do I enable Reach?
Your Kaltura representative will enable Reach on your account, after which your administrator can enable and configure the module. For assistance with setup, please contact your Kaltura representative.
