A link to your own storage
Whatever you already use. A link that stays live until the order is finished is all that is needed, and a password on it is fine as long as it comes with the link.
Before the work starts
What we need from your recording
Captions are only as good as the sound they are taken from. None of this is a hurdle to clear before enquiring: send the video as it is, and we will say plainly what can be done with it.
Six things that decide how a finished file reads
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01
Send the export, not a copy of a copy
The file that came out of your editing software, or the highest quality copy you hold. A screen recording of a video playing loses exactly the detail that makes quiet speech readable.
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02
Speech above the music
Where a music bed or room noise sits at the same level as the voice, some words cannot be recovered by listening harder. Sending the separate voice track, if your edit has one, solves it outright.
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03
Say who is speaking
Where two or more people speak, tell us who they are and whether you want them labelled. Cues can carry a dash for each speaker, or a name, whichever your platform reads.
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04
Send names and terms in writing
People, places, products, abbreviations and anything spelled in a way a listener could not guess. This is the single thing that most changes how a finished file reads.
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05
A script, if one exists
A script, a slide deck or an outline saves a pass over the hard parts and makes the terminology consistent from the first cue.
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06
Passages nobody can hear
Where speech cannot be made out, we ask you before guessing. If it stays unresolved it is marked in the file rather than filled in with something plausible.
Captions in the language that is spoken
Subtitles come back in the language of the recording. Translation into another language is a different service and is not one of ours: a file that says what was said, spelled the way you asked, is what an order delivers.
Tell us the language when you enquire, and, where more than one is spoken in the same recording, which of them needs captioning. Whether we can take it on is settled in the quotation, before you commit to anything.
Captioning is offered in
- English (UK spelling)
- English (US spelling)
- Ukrainian
- Polish
- German
- French
- Spanish
- Italian
Another language, or a recording that moves between two of them: ask. The answer will be yes or no rather than a quotation that quietly assumes the best.
Three ways the file reaches us
A transfer service
Any of the usual ones. Tell us in the enquiry which you will use, so the message does not sit unopened next to a link that has expired.
The audio on its own
Where the video is very large and the captions are for a file you will publish yourself, an exported audio track is enough to work from, and far quicker to send.
None of them runs through this page. There is no upload here and no account to open: the form on the contact page writes an email, and the file itself travels by whichever of the three routes you name in it.
When the speech cannot be made out
Some recordings will not give up every word: a microphone left in a pocket, a room with a hard echo, two people at once over a call that dropped. Listening harder does not recover what was never recorded.
Where a passage is unclear, we ask you before guessing at it, because you were there and we were not. Where it stays unresolved, the file marks it rather than filling the gap with something plausible: a caption that invents a sentence is worse than one that admits a word was lost.
Where a whole recording is beyond captioning, we say so before any work begins and nothing is charged for looking. That conversation belongs at the quotation stage, not at delivery.
What happens to your file
Your recording is used for your order and for nothing else. It is not shown to anyone as an example of what we do, it is not used to train anything, and it is not passed to anyone outside the order.
Working copies are kept while the order runs and for the period named in the order confirmation afterwards, so that a re-export or a correction does not mean sending the video again. Ask for them to be deleted sooner and they are.
What is kept after that, and why, is set out in the privacy policy. Anything commercially sensitive, tell us at operations@subtitleflow.org and it is handled to whatever you require in writing.