Closed Captioning Tutorial using Windows Media Player and VLC Media Player

If you are a fan of foreign language movies, then certainly you will love the Windows Media Player’s Close Caption option. Some viewers also like to read the Close Captions, when they need to keep the volume low, while watching their favorite movies.

 

VLC Media Player do support this feature from the beginning of its release, and this feature is enabled by default in VLC Media Player. On the other hand, you need to enable this feature in Windows Media Player.

 

Do remember, Close Captions are the textual representation of the audio being played in the video. An example of the Close Captions could be our tutorial videos that you watch from our channel. We uploaded Close Captions almost for all of our videos, and the viewer can click the Subtitles, CC button from the bottom right corner. Subtitles are a little bit different than Close Captions. Using Subtitles you can translate the text in other foreign languages. Like, in Youtube you can click the Settings button to translate the text in other languages, in real time.

 

In Windows Media Player, you can turn on Close Captions or Sub Titles by clicking on Play menu, point to Lyrics, Captions and Subtitles, and then click on “On if available”. Now, play a video, which has sub titles available. You must note that, the option itself says “On if available”, that means Subtitles or Close Captions only be visible, if a corresponding file is available on the same location, where your video file is located, as you can see in this folder, and most probably caption file name should be same as video file name, so video player may load them automatically. Media Player supports, SSA, ASS, and SRT file types.

 

In Windows 10, you can also personalize Close Captions. Open Settings window by pressing Windows + I key, and then click Ease of Access. From the left side pane, click Closed Captions, and then adjust the settings accordingly.

 

In VLC Media Player, if captions does not load automatically, then you load them from Subtitle menu. You can also download captions files for your favorite movie from Internet, and can then place them into the same folder.