Captions and transcripts, written for me
Captions used to be the chore that never got done - transcribing an hour of teaching by hand, or paying someone to. On a bernard course they simply happen: upload a video (Put my own video file into a lesson) and a few minutes later the words are there. Audio lessons get exactly the same treatment - a podcast, a talk or a phone voice memo is captioned and transcribed just like a video (Add an audio lesson - a podcast, a talk, a voice memo).
What your learners get
- Captions, one tap away. A button on the player switches them on and off - for the learner watching on a train, the one whose first language isn't yours, the one who just absorbs more by reading along.
- A transcript that follows along. Beside the video, the current line highlights as you speak. Click any line and the video jumps there - re-watching one tricky step no longer means scrubbing back and forth.
- Search inside the lesson. A find box over the transcript takes a learner straight to the moment you said the thing they're looking for (Where do I say that? Search inside my own lessons).
- Chapters, written for you - or by you. A handful of chapter markers appear on the player automatically, so a learner can jump straight to the section they want instead of scrubbing through the whole lesson. And you don't have to accept the automatic ones: tell Bernard exactly where each chapter should start and what it's called - "chapter at 2:10 called Wedging the clay" - and your markers replace them, up to 20 per lesson. Each chapter gets a little preview thumbnail; a marker you nudge to a new spot gets a fresh one generated.
One honest note: automatic captions occasionally mishear unusual words - names, jargon, the vocabulary of your craft. The fix is cheap: ask Bernard to read a lesson's transcript and point out anything that looks off. The prompt below does exactly that.
Transcripts also make your teaching legible beyond the player. Like the notes under each video (Add a lesson to my course), words are what search engines and AI assistants can actually read - a course full of spoken teaching is invisible to them; a course with transcripts is not.
And once your words are written down, they can be translated. Ask Bernard for subtitles in another language and learners get a menu on the player to choose from, while still hearing your voice (Subtitles in another language - French, German, Spanish).
The prompt
“Read the transcript of the [lesson name] lesson in my [course name] course and tell me if any names or technical terms look misheard.”
Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.
Questions people ask
- Do I have to write captions for my course videos?
- No. A few minutes after you upload a video, captions have been written for it automatically. Learners choose whether to show them with one tap on the player - some always watch with them on, some never do, and both get their way.
- How accurate are automatic captions?
- Very good on ordinary speech, occasionally wrong on unusual words - a glaze name, a person's name, a term of your trade. It's worth asking Bernard to read a lesson's transcript and flag anything that looks misheard, especially for the lessons people see first.
- Can I set my own chapters instead of the automatic ones?
- Yes. Tell Bernard where each chapter starts and what to call it - up to 20 markers per lesson, with short titles - and they replace the automatic set. Markers that stay put keep their little preview thumbnails; ones you move get a fresh thumbnail generated for them.
- Do learners see the transcript too?
- Yes - next to the video, a transcript follows along as you speak, and clicking any line jumps the video to that moment. Captions and transcript arrive on their own after upload; the lesson page around them still changes only when you approve it.
- Why does the transcript show on some lessons and not others?
- It is there on every lesson with captions - but on a SHORT video it starts folded away behind a "Show transcript" button, because a full scrolling transcript beside a two-minute clip is more furniture than help. On a longer lesson it opens straight away. Either way one tap changes it, and nothing is hidden from anyone.