How to Import Closed Captions into Storyline 360

Making e-learning accessible to learners with different needs is easier than ever with closed captions in Storyline 360. Closed captioning displays a text transcription of the audio portion of a video or audio file while the audio is playing, making it easy for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to follow along with multimedia content.

Adding accessibility features such as closed captioning unlocks your e-learning for learners with different kinds of needs and abilities. That’s something many of your learners require—and for some situations, it’s even a legal requirement.

In addition to improving accessibility, there are learning benefits to using closed captions. For example:

  • Captions appeal to learners who prefer to read information. They might also improve comprehension and retention of media content by helping the learner maintain concentration on the screen.
  • Captions ensure learners can access their e-learning anywhere, even without headphones (in a noisy environment, in an open-plan workspace, etc.).
  • Captions are helpful for people for whom English is a second language. They help with comprehension of fast speech, accents, mumbling, brand names, and more.

As you can see, there are many benefits to adding closed captions to your e-learning courses. And thanks to Storyline 360, it’s super-easy to do. 

If you already have closed caption files for your audio or video files, you can simply import them. Storyline 360 supports SRT, VTT, SBV, and SUB caption files. For a step-by-step tutorial on importing caption files, head on over here: Importing Closed Captions for Narration and Videos.

If not, you can easily create closed caption files directly in Storyline 360 thanks to our built-in editor. To find out how that works, check out this tutorial: Creating and Editing Closed Captions with the Built-In Editor.

Once you’ve added your closed captions, you might want to adjust the font style to match the rest of your course. It’s very easy to do under the Colors & Effects section of the Player Properties. You’ll notice a Captions Font dropdown for selecting a font, and you can also increase the font size of your captions by increasing the Player Text Size percentage.

By default, the Closed Captions (CC) button will appear in the Storyline 360 player on slides or layers where captions are used, and users can click this button to toggle the captions on and off.

If you’re not using Storyline 360’s default player, you’ll be pleased to know you can create your own custom CC button with triggers to turn the closed captions on and off. Just add a trigger to a button with these settings to create a toggle:

  • Action: Adjust Variable
  • Variable: Player.DisplayCaptions
  • Operator: = NOT Assignment
  • When: User clicks
  • Object: Select your custom button from the drop-down list. 

Now that you can add closed captions in Storyline 360, you can improve both accessibility and the overall learning experience in your next projects.

Get a free, 30-day trial of Articulate 360 to try out these Storyline 360 features. And if you have any questions, post them in the comments!

30 Comments
Diana Myers

Very excited about the options to import CC files to use in Storyline 360! We did a test run, but in ours, the captions box "flashes" in and out instead of remaining on the screen while the text fades nicely from caption one to another (as I've seen in several demo/examples posted with the announcement). We use SRT files for caption. If we set the end time of the previous caption to match the start time of the next caption, will that prevent the "flashing" gray caption boxes? For example, Caption 1 text 00:00.00 to 00:05.26 Caption 2 text 00:05.26 to 00:07.19 Caption 3 text 00:07.19 to 00:10.05 Lastly, can you be specific down to the hundredth of a second, or should you round to tenths or the whole second? (This has been an issue in using SRT captions in a previ... Expand

mat corrado
mat corrado
mat corrado
Diana Myers

Thanks again, Mat! You. Are. Awesome. After reviewing your set of triggers, I was able to create a multi-caption project with buttons to play/pause the video and toggle the captions on/off. I used public domain audio and video, and you can see it here: https://360.articulate.com/review/content/2c33be93-3673-4039-ac54-e7da0cb3e9ad/review Unfortunately, after all of these efforts I'm not any closer to finding a solution or workaround for my ultimate issue: producing Storyline projects that have videos that support closed captions in multiple languages. Our projects include video with narration, and I associate the English version of the .srt file for the first set of captions. But we'd like to give viewers the ability to switch to closed captions in another language. Sadly, when... Expand

mat corrado
Yasuyo Kitano
Rajendra Suryawanshi