About
Kaltura provides machine-generated live captions through its Reach service. Once enabled on your account, this service can be ordered for any scheduled event via your Video Portal, Events platform or KMC.
Live captions are only supported for scheduled events created using the Webcasting (kwebcast) setup. This is because Reach relies on scheduling data (like start and end times), which regular live entries created manually don't include.
If you don’t see the Live captions option, your event may be a regular live stream or the feature may not be enabled. Please contact your Kaltura representative to check your setup or enable this feature.
If you’re using captions from your encoder instead of Reach, see Ingest live captions (encoder-based).
The instructions below show the Theming interface. If your site doesn't use Theming, see our article Video Portal Theming tour to learn more.
Order live captions
- Open the event entry page and click the three-dot menu below the player.
- From the drop-down options, select Reach captions & enrich.
- The Reach captions and enrich screen displays.
- Complete the following fields:
Make sure your event was created as a scheduled webcast. This option isn’t available for regular live entries.
- Feature - Select Live Captions
- Service - Choose Machine
- Source media language - Select the spoken language
- Live captions start time - Choose when the captioning service should start:
- at the beginning of the event
- 15 minutes before the event starts (recommended)
- 30 minutes before the event starts
- 60 minutes before the event starts
- Live captions end time - Choose how long captions should run after the scheduled end time:
- at the end of the event
- 15 minutes after the event ends
- 30 minutes after the event ends
- 60 minutes after the event ends
Multiple languages are supported. Don’t see yours? Contact your Kaltura rep to request it.
To avoid disconnects, schedule captions to start slightly before your event, and place the order at least 5 minutes in advance.
To return to the order summary, click Back.
Please note that if you reschedule the event, the original order won't update automatically. You will have to cancel it and place a new order.
Status definitions
- Pending - The vendor has not yet opened the request
- Scheduled - The request has been accepted and is being processed
- Completed - The captioning job was completed successfully
Only start streaming when all caption orders show Scheduled. If the status is Pending, wait and refresh the list manually.
Best practices for live captions
- Start streaming a few minutes early to ensure full caption coverage.
- Machine captions must be ordered at least 15 minutes before the event.
- You can cancel machine orders anytime before the event.
- Captions apply to the primary stream only - backup streams aren’t supported.
- Events must be at least 10 minutes long (600 seconds minimum).
- Captions can last up to 8 hours per session.
