Adding live captions to a PowerPoint slide show

How to use PowerPoint for live captioning

Summary

This illustrated article provides step by step procedural instructions for live captioning of a narrated PowerPoint slide show.

Note that it uses the words "caption" and "subtitle" interchangeably.

If the subject was film or video, this would be problematic, but it is acceptable for live narration of a slide show.

Directions 

  1. Open your PowerPoint slides.

  2. If adding captions to a blank slide, click on the Windows icon at lower left and select PowerPoint at far right of pop-up window.

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  1. At top ribbon in PowerPoint, click on the Slide Show tab.

  2. If a yellow bar appears below it asking if you want to “update now,” you may also click the X at far right to remove it.

  3. Note that it is not necessary to update PowerPoint for subtitles to work.

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  1. At top right, click check box next to “Always Use Subtitles”

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  1. Open “Subtitle Settings.”

  2. Click on “Microphone” and select top option that pops up to left, “Digital Audio Interface (Content)”

  3. Please note that this will be true for the vast majority of rooms on campus.

  4. If captioning is not working you will need to go back and try checking other boxes that appear one by one until captioning works.

  5. Also note that in this window you can select the language being spoken and the caption language.

  6. For example if someone is speaking in French, you could have the captions displayed in English, roughly translated.

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  1. Below the microphone option, you can select the position of the subtitles.

  2. If you want only subtitles, and are not adding them below a slide show, select “Top (Overlaid).”

  3. If you want them to appear under your slides, then keep it at “Bottom (Overlaid)”

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  1. You can make the subtitles larger by clicking the last option in the box marked “More Settings (Windows)”

  2. When a new window pops up for Closed Captions, scroll down to find various drop-down options.

  3. To enhance visibility, we suggest making the size 200% (the largest possible) and the color yellow.

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  1. If you are creating a slide just to use captions, go back to the top bar and select “Design” to open a different set of options.

  2. When you have this open, pick the black background option at right.

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  1. Finally, click on the small “projector screen” icon at lower right to start the slide show.

  2. You don’t need to save the slides or type anything on it if you have opened PowerPoint just to do captions.

  3. When you start showing the slide, the “Click to add title” box will disappear and the slide will be blank when the show begins.

  4. A red button that says “Listening” will briefly be seen at lower right.

  5. Subtitles will gradually appear onscreen, with a slight lag due to processing. 

  6. In some cases people have set up their PowerPoint slides in a way that does not allow subtitling.

  7. If you have no captions, are in the slide show mode and still see the Windows menu bar across slides at the bottom of screen (showing icons for different software programs), tap Esc button at far left of keyboard to get out of slides.

  8. Then, go into the Slide Show menu at the top ribbon in PowerPoint and select “Set Up Slide Show.”

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  1. This will open a new window. At upper left, select “Presented by a speaker (full screen) and hit OK at lower right.

  2. Re-start slides, and you should have an image appearing full-screen without the bottom menu bar visible.

  3. Captions should now work properly.

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RECORDING:

While it does not presently appear possible to copy the captions as a separate text file, the entire slide show presentation can be recorded as a video via a button at top right. When you are done it will prompt you on how to save it.

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IMPORTANT TIPS:

  • If only one person is speaking, use the clip-on microphone, as this will amplify their voice via the room PA system.

  • However, it may only caption that speaker, as people further away will not be picked up by this microphone.

  • If it is a discussion or Q&A with multiple people around the room speaking, it may work best not to use the clip-on microphone.

  • In most small classrooms there is a button or array microphone in the middle of the ceiling that picks up voices and will route them to the captioning software.

  • In some rooms only one of the two microphones will send sound to the system. Try talking with and without the clip-on microphone to see which is best for your situation.

  • If some people in the room are not being subtitled well, they will need to speak louder or move closer to the ceiling microphone.

  • People wearing masks may also have problems being understood or correctly subtitled.

  • Quality of subtitles can also vary depending on a person’s accent, enunciation or rate of speech.

  • Captioning in PowerPoint also censors spoken content, so four-letter words and offensive phrases may not appear onscreen.

  • Because the system actually sends the audio to the “cloud” for analysis, and then the captions come back moments later to appear on screen, there will be a slight lag in captioning and sometimes a message will appear warning that “captioning may be slow due to Internet traffic.”

 

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