About

You can order captions for your videos in Content Lab. 

Captions display spoken dialogue and relevant audio information as on-screen text. They improve accessibility for viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing and support viewers who prefer to watch videos without sound.

Before you start

• Video must be in "Ready" status (transcoded)
• Video must be 60 seconds or more in length
• Your account must have Content Lab enabled
• Your account must have an active REACH profile enabled with relevant catalog item(s)

Order captions

1. Open Content Lab. For instructions, see Access Content Lab in your Kaltura application.
2. Click Captions & Translations.
3. Click + Order captions and select Closed captions (CC).



The Order captions screen displays. 



4. Complete the following fields:

• Unit – This option only appears in the event that different Reach profiles (budgets) are configured for each unit in your account. The selected unit will be charged for the captions request.
• Service Type -Select one of the following:
  • Machine – Automatically generated captions.
  • Professional service – Human-created and reviewed captions.
• Source language - Select the source media language from the drop-down menu. The options in the menu are dependent on your REACH plan.
• Vendor - Select the vendor. Items in this drop-down list appear as "Vendor Name + Turnaround time of the catalog item + Catalog item name" with available vendors based on catalog items.  
• Instructions (Professional only) - Add notes for human editors and reviewers. For example, you can provide guidance on terminology, speaker names, formatting preferences, or accessibility requirements.

5. Click Submit.

A confirmation message displays.

Your captions order appears in the "In Progress" area of the Captions screen and is labeled as "Pending". When the captions are ready, they are automatically added to the video.

Add instructions for professional captions

If you select Professional as the service type, you can use the Instructions field to share terminology or guidance specific to the media with professional reviewers.

You can:

• Type your own instructions in the Instructions field.
• Click a preset tag to populate the Instructions field, then select one of the suggested completions.
• Click a preset tag to populate the Instructions field, then edit or complete the text manually instead of selecting a suggested completion.

Preset tags

Preset tags are grouped into the following categories:

• Terminology & names – Define acronyms, speaker names, proper names, and preferred terminology.
• Include speaker labels – Request speaker labels where multiple speakers are present.
• Style & tone – Preserve wording, simplify phrasing, remove filler words, or maintain a consistent tone.
• Formatting – Improve punctuation, readability, and sentence casing.
• Accessibility – Include non-speech elements and clarify speaker identity.

View captions orders and perform additional tasks 

Navigate back to the Content Lab's main menu. The number of requests are displayed in the Captions & Translations box. 

View status

Click on the Captions & Translations box to open the Captions orders screen.

In our example below, there are two existing captions orders - one is in Pending status, and one is in Ready status. 

Status types

The following statuses are available for captions requests:

• Pending - when generating new request
• Pending for Moderation - requests in approval queue
• Rejected - requests that were rejected on moderation. This status must include reject reason.
• Processing - sent to the vendor and vendor received request (you cannot cancel a request when the status is Processing)
• Completed - when captions were received from the vendor
• Error - an error was sent from the vendor
• Aborted

Manage captions assets

Click Manage captions assets.  

The Captions tab of the entry details page in Rich Media CMS displays.

For complete information on this tab, see Upload and manage captions in Rich Media CMS.

Additional tasks

Click on the three dots to the right of the request and choose from the available options depending on status type:

View order details - available for all statuses

Cancel order request - only available for Pending

Launch editor - only available for Ready

Download - only available for Ready

View order details

In the three-dot menu, select View order details.

The Order details screen displays. 

Cancel order request

1. Click Cancel order request. Note, any action items associated with the request will be canceled. A confirmation message displays. 
    
2. Click Cancel request.
   If you try to cancel a request that's already in progress, a message displays: The request is already in progress, therefore cannot be canceled.

Launch editor

See our article Use the captions editor in Content Lab for details.

User experience

Once captions are ready, they’re automatically added to the media. Depending on admin settings, a CC button may appear, letting users toggle captions on or off.

Admins can also set captions to display by default when playback starts. If multiple caption languages are available, users can select them from the captions sub-menu in the settings.