How to Upload a Video to Vimeo and Add Closed Captioning (CC)

Uploading the Video:

  1. In your computer browser, navigate to vimeo.com and log into your account. If you have a Google or Gmail account, you can use that to create your Vimeo account. 
  2. After you’re logged in and see the home page, hover over the New Video button and from the drop down menu select Upload. 
  3. From this page you can either drag and drop from a file explorer window or select the blue Or choose files button. 
  4. After choosing your video file, you will be taken to a section where you can fill out information like Title, Description, and Privacy. For the most part, you can just give the video a title and hit the Save button at the bottom of the page. The default settings will do. 
  5. Your video is now uploaded. Captions are not automatically generated, so they will have to be manually uploaded with a caption file. Caption files are generated from services like Rev and ADH Subtitles Maker. If you don’t have these files or aren’t sure how to make them and need to have closed captioning for your video, it is recommended that you upload to YouTube instead where captions are generated automatically. 

Uploading Caption Files:

  1. To upload captions for your video, hover over your profile icon in the top right and a menu should appear. Click on Videos.
  2. Choose your video from the list and a new browser tab should open.
  3. In the list of options to the left, click on Distribution. From the drop down, click on Subtitles. 
  4. In the list directly to the right, there should be a section called Subtitles and captions. Click on the Add file  button and from the drop down menus select the Language and Type of captions, and then hit Choose file. Select your file from the file browser window that opens.
  5. After you’ve found your file, it should show up underneath Subtitles and captions and have a little switch  next to it. By default, the captions are turned off, so flip that switch to turn them on. 
  6. At the bottom of the page, hit Save to save the changes you’ve made.
  7. Your Vimeo video now has closed captioning.
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