As part of Udemy’s plan to expand the global reach of instructors, and help make course content more accessible to students around the world, we provide auto-generated captions in English for English video lectures. When English isn’t the native language of a student, captions can make courses easier to comprehend. Further, captions also provide more clarity, reinforce learning, and make courses accessible to hearing-impaired students.
Please note: over the coming months Udemy will also be creating auto-generated Spanish and Portuguese captions for courses with videos that are instructed in these respective languages. If you're working on a new course in one of these languages, it will be automatically captioned when it’s published. Spanish and Portuguese courses that are already published will gradually receive auto-captions over the coming months.
This article includes answers to the frequently asked questions we receive regarding the automatically generated captions program.
How are the automatic captions created?
The automatically generated captions are generated using speech recognition technology.
When will auto-generated captions be added to new courses?
English, auto-generated captions will be generated for new English courses, after the course has been submitted to our review team for approval, but before the course is published and open to enrollments on the marketplace.
Once my course has received auto-generated captions, if I publish a new lecture video, will they receive auto-generated captions as well?
Yes. New, English videos that are published in your courses will receive automatically generated captions.
Will I be notified when my course has received automatically generated captions?
Yes. Once auto-generated captions have been added to your course you will be notified on the Captions page, and you will also receive a notification in the notifications bell.
How will the auto-generated captions be indicated on the course landing page?
If a course has received auto-generated captions, then “auto-generated” will appear beside the captions icon on the course landing page. If a significant amount of the auto-generated captions are edited by the instructor, however, then “Auto-generated” will be removed from the captions icon.
For steps on how to use the captions editing tool, please click here.
Can I request that auto-generated captions in languages other than English be added to my course?
Currently the captioning program is limited to creating English captions for English content only. Instructors are free to add captions in other languages to their course if they wish. For more information on how to do this, please click here.
Can I edit the auto-generated captions myself?
Yes. If you would like to improve and edit the auto-generated captions that were generated for your course, you can do so by using the captions editing tool. For steps on how to use the editing tool, please click here.
Can I still upload my own captions to my course?
Yes. Instructors can still upload and use captions they’ve created for the course, and these captions will be utilized instead of the auto-generated captions. For steps on how to do this, please refer to this article.
Can I disable the captions myself?
Yes. If you wish to disable the captions for your course, you can do so by clicking on Disable at the top right hand of the Captions page. Please note that disabling the captions will also disable transcripts for the course.
It says the automatically generated captions were disabled due to “low quality”. How is this determined?
Captions can receive a low quality rating for several reasons, some of which include poor audio levels in the video lecture, background noise, or unrecognizable words. In these cases, the automatic captions will be disabled. Students that specifically requested the captions due to a hearing impairment, however, will still be able to utilize them.
Instructors can re-enable the captions by downloading the caption file, editing it in a text editor, and then re-uploading it to the associated lectures. Steps on how to do this are posted above.