Making YouTube Captions Appear in the Arc Media Player

ProfessorBeyrer
Community Coach
Community Coach
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Thank you everyone who read this blog entry. I discovered a way to import YouTube captions into Arc and wrote another entry about it: YouTube Captions to Arc‌.

It is awesome that YouTube videos can be played inside the Arc media player and thereby allowing instructors to use all of Arc's goodness with videos from that source. In my U.S. history classes I'm going to have to work in some late-90s popular culture so I can use Arc to make pop-up videos of VH1's Pop Up Videos. Smiley Wink

Unfortunately, the Arc media player does not recognize that a YouTube video has been captioned. It is possible to show the YouTube captions within the Arc media player by opening the video within a YouTube window and enabling captions there. Hopefully Instructure's developers will be able to figure how to have https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/11306-arc-recognize-captioned-youtube-videos?sr=search&searchI.... Until then, our students will get an opportunity to practice their fine mousing skills in order to make those captions appear within the Arc media player. The embedded video demonstrates the following workaround:

  1. Hey students, carefully hover your mouse over the the lower-right part of the video. You might have to move your mouse pointer onto the video from the top of the video and not the bottom or side as the pop-up Arc controls cover the place you need to click.
  2. Once you see the YouTube watermark, click on it to open the video in a new browser window or tab.
  3. On the YouTube page, select the option to display captions.
  4. Close that YouTube page.
  5. Refresh the browser window or tab with Canvas to continue watching the video using the Arc player.

 @Chris_Hofer  Thank You ‌for asking the question that led me to this discovery.

3 Comments
Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

Thanks for these instructions.  I tried your steps using Google Chrome this time...and still no luck.  After I clicked on the CC icon within the YouTube video (on the YouTube website), closed the tab, and then refreshed my current page, it still would not show the captions.  Does it matter how the Arc video is displayed on the page?  I used the Arc button available within the RCE to add the Arc content to a page in Canvas.

ProfessorBeyrer
Community Coach
Community Coach

That's how I used it as well (Arc button in the RCE). I did some additional testing and discovered a couple of things about YouTube that might make the difference you noted:

  • The YouTube author can decide not to show any captions, even auto-generated ones. I found one and when I selected the option for captions my only choice was to start writing captions. That one of course won't have any captions inside the Arc media player.
  • If the only caption option for a YouTube video is auto-generation, turning those on does not "stick" when the browser is reloaded, even within the YouTube page. So this workaround for captions within the Arc media player also won't work.
ProfessorBeyrer
Community Coach
Community Coach

Thank you  @Chris_Hofer ‌ for your comment on this entry. I discovered a better workaround and blogged about it: