UPDATE: I found the most amazing new tool to download youtube captions and subtitles here:

http://mo.dbidb.com/

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Good day everyone! I’m bringing you a rather rare, yet still very powerful YouTube technique for making your videos more interactive and capable of reaching more people.

Not everyone speaks English who uses YouTube, which means if you only provide videos in one language without any subtitles or captions you’re missing a great amount of  views on your videos.

Below I’m going to show you step-by-step how to:

1. Download the Captions from someone else’s Youtube video for your own reference

2. Add Captions on Any YouTube Video of your own

3. Add Captions to your own YouTube Video EXACTLY at the correct time.

4. Add Captions to your own YouTube Video for Live viewing.

Okay, I want you to OPEN a new web browser or tab to get started.

1. Download the Captions from someone else’s Youtube video for your own reference

I’m going to be using the following video of my friend Peter Joseph of the Zeitgeist Movement to show you how to grab or download the Captions used in his presentation in the video playlist below.

First, click play and see the Captions that automatically play.  Look for the window like this →→→

Notice when you have to chose the Caption Language you are seeing the Closed Captions (CC) in that language as the video plays.

The best part… The URL that this video above is from is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnuhKYcO8As

All we care about here is the part I have made bold in the URL above SnuhKYcO8As which is often called the VIDEO_ID

The next step is to use this URL http://video.google.com/timedtext?lang=en&v=VIDEO_ID

Replace the VIDEO_ID in the above URL with our specific YouTube Video ID = SnuhKYcO8As

For example, the final URL you want here is http://video.google.com/timedtext?lang=en&v=SnuhKYcO8As

Now put that newly created URL in a new tab or browser window and you will see a page like the one below.

Now don’t get all scared because it’s got some code on it in XML format.

Simply Right-click on the page, select “view source“ or “View Page Source” and copy all the text in that new window that opens.

Go to: http://www.nicertutor.com/xml.cgi and Paste the Copied page source code into the box on that page and Press “Go”

You’ll get a page that looks like this where you want to just Copy the Captions

You are all done with that part now on to the second part.

Now you want to Open a NOTEPAD document and Paste all Captions into the Notepad like this below

Save the NOTEPAD document with the Captions separated by a new line with each sentence or statement.

IMPORTANT: Save As>>>  .sub as the file type like this below

Put another way, when you Save the Notepad document with whatever name you wish and add “.sub” to the filename and click save. You don’t have to change the filetype dropdown window.

The Easy YouTube caption creator is designed to make it very simple to create a caption text file (.sub format) that you can then add to YouTube video files that you have uploaded.

Go to: http://accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/accessibility-tools/easy-youtube-caption-creator/

Now Copy the Youtube URL of YOUR VIDEO you wish to add subtitles to- see the original YouTube URL here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnuhKYcO8As

Paste that URL into the Easy YouTube caption creator like this below

I love this tool to create Captions exactly during the time the video plays this part.

Here’s how it works after you PRESS>> Next step (transcript details) button on the Easy Youtube caption creator page.

You Paste the transcript into the box and PRESS>> “Split into separate caption lines” button and you’ll see a new page where it shows Your Video embedded there like below.

Now for the fun part.

3. Add Captions to your own YouTube Video EXACTLY at the correct time.

PRESS>> the PLAY Button and Hold your finger over the letter “A” key on your keyboard, but don’t press it yet.

The video will begin playing.

Below the video you’ll see your captions that you pasted in.

As the video plays you’ll press the “A” key on your keyboard every time you hear the part you want shown in a Caption as it plays.

When you are finished watching the whole video and pressing the “A” key each time you want to add a Caption at that point you’ll get a new list of Captions to Paste into a Notepad Document and save as a .sub file.

4. Add Captions to your own YouTube Video for Live viewing.

Now go to your YouTube account and add the Captions and Subtitles to your newly uploaded video.