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Automatic Closed Captions in Big Blue Button

Background

BBB introduced automatic closed captions in version 2.6. Both options for manual and automatic closed captions exist which can be confusing.

The automatic transcription is only available for browsers that support Speech Recognition (Google Chrome, MS Edge, and Safari). If you join with non-supported browsers, you will see a warning at the bottom of the join audio dialogue - "Your browser doesn't support speech recognition. Your audio won't be transcribed".

Using Automatic Closed Captions

There are two aspects to Automatic Closed Captions:

  • The option to have your words as a presenter/contributor transcribed.
  • The option to view transcribed words. To have your spoken words automatically transcribed you need to select the option when connecting to the meeting. You cannot do it once in the meeting, however you can leave the meeting and rejoin to select this option.

Selecting the correct language is important as it helps the translation engine. This option is not available on iPhone or on Android, as per the screen shot below:

To View captions on a Desktop/Laptop computer

When one or more users have enabled transcription, a CC button will appear. To view the transcriptions for those with ‘CC’ in their “who is talking” icon, press the CC button. The ‘CC’ button is in the bottom left of the BBB screen.

To View captions on Mobile device

For mobile devices, the ‘CC’ button is in the three dots at the top right corner.

Maximum Confusion – Manual and Automatic Closed Captions Together

It is possible to have both Manual and Automatic Closed Captions. Manual closed captions is where someone manually types the words of the speaker into the meeting captions. This is mostly used for translations. Below shows the ability to enable the viewing of the two different kinds of captions. The left hand CC option is for viewing manual captions. The right hand CC with the up arrow is for viewing automatic captions.

Manual Closed Captions info here: https://support.bigbluebutton.org/hc/en-us/articles/1500005215861-Use-Closed-Captions

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