Instagram began some time ago to give the option to add subtitles automatically in all the videos that appear in the IGTV section and later, they decided to bring these news to their stories. An important improvement in terms of accessibility and also for the performance of user posts. We explain how you can add automatic captions on Instagram stories.
Instagram brings automatic captions to stories
If you are a regular user of Instagram, surely you have noticed how significant efforts are being made from the social network itself to give much more weight to features such as Reels or stories.
The latter continue to be especially important for the platform, although the Reels have stolen some prominence from them lately. And it is that although the first ones represent the best bet in order to compete against TikTok, the second ones are the ones that make many users enter daily to see what the profiles they follow have uploaded or even share their stories of the day.
Well, without neglecting other options such as purchases from the platform or the main feed itself, which is still the base of the platform, now the social network has introduced a new improvement in the stories: option to generate subtitles automatically.
A feature that comes after being enabled and tested a little earlier in IGTV videos. How do they work? How are they activated? What benefits does it bring to users? We are going to see it calmly so that you understand the process well and some other detail that you should also know.
How to add captions to Instagram stories
Let's start with the basics: how do these automatic subtitles work? As the name suggests they generate alone, without the need for the user to intervene in the process. You don't have to do anything because it is the Instagram system itself that takes care of the transcription.
Once the story is recorded, all you have to do is indicate that you want the subtitles to be generated. In this way, the text is created that will later be seen on the screen during the playback of the story.
As you can imagine, being an automated process, it is likely that the result is not 100% accurate. What will a greater or lesser correspondence depend on? Well, on various factors such as environmental noise, the quality of the microphones or the user's own vocalization.
Luckily, and as happens on other platforms that are also capable of generating these subtitles automatically, Instagram has assessed the possibility that this transcription is not always accurate and gives the option to be editable later by the user.
Not only possible errors in the generation of subtitles is what can be solved, there will also be options to give it a different style with changes that affect the font, color, position and even the animation.
https://twitter.com/instagram/status/1389604238154559493?s=20
Now that you know this, how do you tell Instagram to automatically generate the captions for a story? Well, the process would be as follows:
- Open the Instagram app on your mobile phone.
- Go to the stories section and record as usual.
- On the next screen, tap on the stickers icon to add a new one.
- Find and select the new sticker to add automatic subtitles (Captions).
- Once added, the system will take care of generating them.
- Now adjust the parameters of color, position, font, etc.
- Accept and you already have your story with subtitles ready to share.
As you can see, it is an extremely simple process and it has gotten rid of its main starting drawback, when subtitles were only available in English. Since that is no longer the case, you will be able to get your small pieces to appear perfectly subtitled on the social network even if you use Spanish.
I can't find the sticker Captions
Relax, you are part of that large group of users who still do not have access to the function. Automatic subtitling is a feature which is currently in Test phase, and that means only some users can use it. Yes, the feature is available to more and more users, but it is usually accounts with many followers that give visibility to the feature. So stop looking for the famous sticker because you won't find it. You will have to keep waiting so that you and millions of other users can access the label when it is your turn.
Improves the performance and accessibility of stories
During the last months we have seen how many applications and platforms finally opted for something as necessary as the improved accessibility. Even any user who, due to the place they are in, cannot activate the sound to listen to it and might think that it is unnecessary, but if you have some kind of vision, hearing or mobility problem, things change. radically
Therefore, with this addition, the truth is that the accessibility of the stories improves and facilitates consumption by all those users with hearing problems. And it is that they will be able to know exactly what is being said in them thanks to the subtitles generated automatically within the social network.
But that is not the only positive consequence, although it is the most important. Another added benefit of these subtitles is that will help performance performance or commitment of the stories. In other words, as happened with video on other social networks such as Facebook, being able to consume content without having to activate the sound is something that we like because we are not always in a position to hear what is being said. Imagine yourself in a meeting that is a pestiño, on public transport or in any other part where it is impossible to listen to anything calmly. Or for privacy. Zero volume is always welcome.
To be able to do it before, the user, before publishing it, had to add subtitles by "burning" them with a video editor or resort to an option such as adding a text manually with the message from the Instagram app. Something that is not comfortable or similar at all and that takes us much longer and in some cases even third-party programs.
By adding these automatic subtitles when you can't activate the sound, or you don't want to, you'll be able to know exactly what's being said. So very good for all those of us who usually always carry the phones in silence.
Subtitles in the Reels?
With the arrival of automatic subtitles to IGTV and to stories, it is normal to think that the next step that Instagram should take are Reels. Well, stop imagining it because the Reels will also have the possibility to enjoy this option of generated subtitles but, when they are already available, do not doubt that we will tell you how to activate them.
However, while Instagram is working on this new implementation of automatic subtitles, we are going to show you a simple way to add subtitles to your videos easily and quickly. As always, we will do it with third-party apps. After a good research, we have come up with a free cross-platform application that will make your life much easier.
The best tool so far: AutoCap
To do this process, there is an application that is available on both Android phones and iPhone. Is called AutoCap and it is completely free. The first thing we have to do is look for it in the Play Store or App Store and install it in our terminal.
- If you have not yet started recording your Reel, it is advisable to use the function of Camera which is integrated into this app. We will simply have to select our language, and the voice recognition will serve to automatically subtitle our speech without having to do practically anything.
- If you already have the video recorded, the second option that the application has will carry out a similar process. AutoCap is capable of transcribing the video in a matter of seconds.
In this way, you will not have to wait for Instagram to introduce this new improvement to be able to upload subtitled videos. This application is today the most interesting that there is to subtitle videos automatically. The application is interesting whether you work with Android or iOS, as it also has a version for iPad.
Other interesting alternatives
If for some reason, AutoCap doesn't quite convince you, here are a few alternatives that you can use as well:
- Captioned: This Android application does not have limitations regarding the length of the video, but it does restrict the number of videos that we can process each day. Its strong point is that it can translate our transcript automatically using Google Translate.
- capwing: It is a very advanced web utility, which will be especially useful if you work editing a large batch of videos for Reels. Kapwing has all the features you can imagine. You can translate, set the font you want, it even allows you to work on the video. However, it is a monthly payment tool.
- veed.io: is another web-based application. It is more affordable than Kapwing and can also translate the transcript. The bad thing is that it is limited to 10 minutes and 720p resolution.
- voicella: this app for Android has several customization options, and allows us to download the subtitles in .SRT format. The bad thing is that it is also expensive and does not have a premium version that is achieved with a single payment.