In this tutorial Sheryl Plouffe, a video strategist, demonstrates how to add subtitles and captions to a YouTube video using the ClipScribe platform. She walks through uploading a video (via desktop or phone), selecting language and orientation, and waiting for ClipScribe’s auto‑generated subtitles. Once the subtitles are ready, she shows how to choose a layout/aspect‑ratio (e.g., 16:9, 1:1, 4:5) that matches specific social‑media platforms, and how to edit the auto‑captions for spelling, punctuation, names, URLs, and timing. Sheryl also covers branding options such as colors, fonts, logos, emojis, and headlines, and explains the importance of meticulously proofreading subtitles because 83 % of viewers watch videos with sound off. After finalising the captions, she saves the project, clicks “Make,” and then exports the finished video along with optional assets: the video file, a blog transcript, an SRT file for YouTube/Facebook, or a Dropbox copy. The video ends with a brief promotion of Sheryl Plouffe Media’s video‑creation services and a call‑to‑action to subscribe to the channel.
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Most videos are initially watched with the sound off, so it's imperative to at least consider applying and embedding subtitles and captions into your YouTube videos. Sheryl Plouffe here, video strategist, and in this video I'm going to show you step by step how we do it here at Sheryl Plouffe Media Inc. We use ClipScribe as part of a service that we offer for coaches, consultants, entrepreneurs, and small business owners to help make videos for them. But I can show you how to do this yourself as well. So let's head over to my computer and I'll show you how it's done step by step. So what you're seeing right now is the inside of my ClipScribe account. I will leave a link to ClipScribe underneath this video should you want to check it out for yourself. And this is a very powerful tool. It's really amazing. And it actually tells you right on the front screen. Select the files to upload, or you can drag and drop and copy and paste those files like right into your account. So in this case, I'm going to click on Select File, and I'm just going to go in and find a random video here. I'll choose this one here from Nicole. And so I'll open that up, and then it tells— it says here, you know, what do you want to call it? So we'll just call it Test. For the purpose of this demonstration. It is in English. Yes. You can see all the different languages there. There's even Canadian French, but we're using US English here. And then it is actually shot horizontally in this case, but you can also upload videos that are shot vertically. So this case is horizontal, and then I hit submit. OK, so once I hit submit, you will see that it's uploading and this process can take a little while depending on the size of the file. Interesting thing while this is uploading, you can also do this from your phone so you can open your ClipScribe account on your browser on your phone. If you've produced the video on your phone, which I often do, I can just take that file and upload it right through the browser on my phone. And then come over to my desktop and open it here, and I'm gonna find the video inside my account. So either way, whether you upload it through your phone or whether you upload it through your computer, either way, that video needs to make its way into your account. So you can see here the little robot shows up and says you might have to wait about 5 to 10 minutes while the subtitles are being created. And that's what's happening here. This program is auto-generating subtitles or captions for your video, and it will email you when they're ready. So once you see the little robot, you can actually click on the X here at the top right-hand corner, and then you have to wait patiently. Once that video is complete, you will see it popping up here as the last entry in your account. So let's just see here. That wasn't a long video. It was only a minute and 40, so it's not taking too long to upload in this case. And you can actually see it says here, making the titles. So once you see that, you know that it's in progress. It's actually making those subtitles for you. And then once it's complete, you will see this progress bar will be completely filled in just like these other ones with the blue, the blue and the green. And once you see that, this will change and it will say titles ready for design. Once you see titles ready for design and the little plus sign underneath it is going to show up and it's it says when you hover over it, choose a new design layout. So we're just waiting patiently for this to happen. It shouldn't actually be too long because this is a video that is fairly short. I think we saw it was 1 minute and 40 seconds long, and it outlines here what the— these are different jobs in ClipScribe. You can actually use the refresh button over here should you wish to. And as you go down here, you can see all the different client videos that we've created. Some for me, some for other people. So there's a whole bunch of stuff in here. Let's go back up. There's also a button over here that is in progress. I'll toggle over that just to show you while that other video is uploading. These videos here are layouts where the designing process, the layout process has already begun or has been completed. You can actually see the status here, whether it's complete or incomplete. And right next to it, it tells you what layout you chose. You chose for that particular version of that video. And then here you have an edit button, a download button, or a delete button. So you can easily come back in and choose how many entries you'd like to see on the list. If you want to see all of your videos, or if you only want to see the last 10 of your videos in progress, you can choose how you want to view that. So if I click on all, we'll see that there's a whole bunch of them here. Okay, so let's go back to our uploads and see how our video is doing. It's still processing right now. It says it's making titles. So what I'll do is I'll pause this recording for just a few more seconds and then we'll come back once it's complete. Okay, so now it shows that the titles are ready for design. So what I'll do is I'll click on the little plus sign and it will give you— ClipScribe will give you a whole bunch of layouts that you can choose from. What's interesting is that underneath each layout is a little icon, and it will even tell you what platforms these layouts are appropriate for. You can see that Facebook shows up on all of them. So does Instagram for the most part. You can see here the 16:9 where there is no other wrapping, so to speak, around it is appropriate for LinkedIn and for Twitter. And also for YouTube. So this is really what I call the foundational video. There are no other sections or areas around the foundation video. The other ones, though, do have places where you might be able to put your transcriptions, or your— rather, your subtitles and captions, or maybe even some headlines if you want to turn it into a meme-style video. That would be— that would work here with this 4:5. That would also work with this 9:16. These numbers at the top, 1:1, 9:16, 1:1, 4:5— these numbers are the aspect ratio of the videos. So this one here on the far left is perfectly square, which means that it's 1:1. It's exactly the same width as it is in height. Right? So that makes for a square. When you have 9 by 16, it means that it's 9 wide and 16 tall versus this one over here, which is the opposite. It's 16 wide and 9 tall. So that's what those numbers represent at the top. So what I'll do is I will choose, um, let me choose one that actually has some room for us to do a little bit of experimentation and some fun here for demonstration purposes. I'll choose this one here. I rarely use the 4:5 layout, but I want to show you just an example here. So we're waiting for this to upload. Now I can also— I know this is a video about the subtitles and captions, but I just wanted to mention that there are templates in here as well. So you can save as a new template, select a template, and that's another great feature in ClipScribe. I'll do a video on that likely in the future. So Once you have your video up and you can see now that that 4:5 aspect ratio, that layout is right in front of us. We could definitely change some aspects of this in terms of branding for color, for the different fonts at the bottom. There's lots we can do, but we're just going to talk about this function right here, which is CC, closed captioning. Now, this is an auto-generated subtitle, or these are, these are auto-generated subtitles, you will need to go through it with a fine-tooth comb because not every word will come up perfectly. Often names are not spelled properly. Like, for example, my name is never spelled with an S, it's always spelled with a C. So you need to go through it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that the punctuation is correct, that it's laid out the way you want, that the words are spelled correctly. That it's not missing anything. Maybe again spellings of names or especially the spelling of URLs or phone numbers if they're mentioned in the video. So you definitely want to go through this and check it all. This can be and likely is really the most time-consuming part of this process, but trust me when I say it's worth it. The reason why it's worth it is because 83% of videos are watched without the sound on initially. So if you don't have subtitles or captions, you can really be, you know, losing a lot of viewers who might otherwise watch your video or be engaged with your video without the sound on initially, and maybe they'll eventually turn it on. And there could be various reasons why that might not be the case for them to be able to watch your video. So let's go through here. So have you heard this saying, you're either growing or you're dying? There's no standing still. In life is what that should read. In life. Okay, now I just happen to know what she said here because I produced this video. If you want to listen to it, you would just click on the— You're either growing or you're dying. There's no standing still in life. Hi, I'm Nicole Pereira from the Growth— Just pause that so you can see here that you can listen to it as you go through the process. And you can, you can pause it, you can start it again, you can pause it, you can start it again. You're gonna wanna go through the entire batch of subtitles, and when you get to the bottom, you'll see that there's another blue button that takes us to the second page. So depending on the length of this video will dictate how many pages of subtitles you have to go through. In this case, it looks like there's only one, and then actually two. The second page only had one more subtitle to go through, and it's blank. So in this case, we'll go back, and the majority of the titles are all on the same one page. Okay, so "Finer Things in Life That Matter Most to You." Once you are happy with that, those subtitles and those captions, you'll come up to the top and you'll click Save. This is going to cement or save your changes of those subtitles on that particular video. It says your video has been updated and it's been saved. This is the point in the process where you're likely want— going to want to do more design. I'll likely do more videos to show you all the different features of this of this tool called ClipScribe. But let's say you've gone through and you've added your logo and images, you've added emojis, you've added a timer, you know, you've done the headline. The headline is really just up in here. Okay, let's just say that this is a headline, and I'll just make this big here so you can see. You can change this to any color you want. Once you're happy with that and you've saved it, you will click on Make. So let me just do that to show you. So I'm just saving this again. It's just like a Word document. As you continue to work on your project, I would suggest that you continue to save your work. And then once you're happy with, with it, you click Make. Okay, so the process has completed, and how you know it's complete is when you click on this Export button, you'll see a bunch of blue buttons here. That describe what you can do from this point. One is you can download the actual video. You can also get a blog transcript of the video. So this is really helpful for those of you who want to have companion text to your video on your blog. You can export the SRT file, which allows you then to upload your now corrected subtitles into Facebook, into YouTube through the SRT functionality. You could also save this directly to Dropbox. So lots of different options that you have at this point. So that's really what you do in order to get subtitles on your video and how to apply them and really embed them onto your video through ClipScribe. So why don't I download it to give you a sense of what this is actually going to look like. I'll open it. And now I'll play it. I want you to watch on the bottom here for the subtitles. Have you heard the saying you're either growing or you're dying? There's no standing still in life. Hi, I'm Nicole Pereira from the Growth Academy, and I think this— So you can see now how that is embedded on the actual video. ClipScribe is an amazing tool, right? But if you're sitting there right now and you're saying to yourself, I'm just not sure that we have I don't have the people in place or the team in place to be able to really action the things that I've just taught. That may well be the case. You know, maybe it would be worth a conversation between us to figure out what would be an appropriate roadmap for you and for your company to actually get these videos made. We do offer a service here at Sheryl Plouffe Media where we create videos for clients. You just saw a few examples of them as we scrolled through there. So if you're interested to know more, look for the link in the description. The other thing I would mention is, ah, don't forget all of these other videos. Videos here on my YouTube channel, be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell because new videos come out every Thursday. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next one.
