Live Auto-Captions for Zoom Meetings

Brief Background

At the time of authoring this Knowledge Base article (February 2021), NIC is largely using 3PlayMedia live auto-captions for Zoom meetings.  3PlayMedia and Zoom have established a process that works well for many Zoom meetings, but it is important to note that any Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) engine will never be on par with a human captionist.

"How Do I Know if I Need Captions for My Zoom Meeting?"

There is one main criterion, or question, for determining if you need to provide live auto-captions in your Zoom meeting...Is your Zoom meeting intended for the Public, All Students, All Staff/Faculty, or for a person who has an Accommodation Request through Disability Support Services?  In any of those cases, you are going to need live captions in order to be compliant with §508 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Requesting Live Auto-Captions

Adhering to the process below should work flawlessly when followed to the letter:

  1. Schedule your upcoming meeting in Zoom.
    (Note: Please allow enough time prior to your meeting for IT to schedule your live auto-captions with 3PlayMedia)
  2. Request Live Auto Captions for your upcoming Zoom meeting by submitting a ticket via nic.edu/it.
  3. IT will notify you when your meeting’s live auto-captions have been scheduled.
  4. 30 minutes prior to your meeting you will receive an email from 3PlayMedia:
    (Note: Whoever schedules the Zoom Meeting will receive this email, regardless of whether the meeting is co-hosted with someone else)
    Screenshot of email from 3PlayMedia with a button and link for starting meeting captions
    Click the button or link within the email, which will take you to a page with instructions and a few form fields:
    Screen shot on 3PlayMedia.com with instructions for adding captions to zoom meeting
    Keep this window open while you move on to the next step.
  5. Start your scheduled Zoom meeting on your PC or Mac.
  6. Click on the Captions button to display the caption options and click the Copy API Token button:
    Screenshot from Zoom showing the Captions options with a rectangle highlighting the button "Copy the API token"
  7. Navigate back to the 3PlayMedia instructional page from step 4 and paste (ctrl+v on PC and ⌘+v on Mac) the API Token from step 6 into the field labeled "Step 2: Paste your Zoom API Token". Click the Add Captions to Meeting button, and you should see a green confirmation message appear:
    Screenshot showing a success message: "Your Zoom Closed Captioning URL was successfully added. If this is a valid URL, captions will show up shortly after the following two steps are completed."
    You can now close this window.
  8. Back in your Zoom meeting, click the More button and click the option for Live on Custom Live Streaming Service:
    Screenshot from Zoom showing the More Options menu with a rectangle highlighting "Live on Custom Live Streaming Service"
    Another window will open in your browser, establishing the connection from your Zoom meeting to 3PlayMedia.  Once the connection is established, you can safely close the browser window.
  9. Start talking to ensure the live auto-captions are working, though expect a slight delay of 10-20 seconds.
  10. Conduct and end your meeting as you would normally.  The live auto-captions will terminate once the Zoom meeting (and the live stream to 3PlayMedia) has ended.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: If I setup a recurring Zoom meeting, will the live auto-captions also be recurring?

A: Unfortunately, no. Live auto-captions will need to be individually scheduled for each instance of your recurring meeting.  Please include this detail in your initial request for live auto-captions.

Q: Can I do multiple streams in my Zoom meeting, so that I can have live auto-captions and a live feed to YouTube?

A: Unfortunately, no.  Zoom is limited to one live-stream.  Contact the Helpdesk by submitting a ticket via nic.edu/it if you would like to talk more about live-streaming to multiple sources.

Q: How can I maximize the accuracy of the live auto-captions?

A: Three really good recommendations:

  1. Include this detail in your initial request for live auto-captions, and IT will configure your scheduled live auto-captions to maximize accuracy.  Be aware that this will also increase the delay of when the captions will appear in your Zoom meeting. 

  2. Make sure you are in a quiet room when conducting your Zoom meeting.

  3. Use an external mic, like a headset, for your audio input device in your Zoom meeting.

Q: Will I be charged for using live auto-captions?

A: 3PlayMedia charges $0.60 per minute of live auto-captioning.  Given the rise in virtual meetings from COVID-19 mandates, IT Accessibility is currently absorbing the cost of live auto-captions for Zoom meetings that fall into the criterion mentioned at the beginning of this Knowledge Base article.  This may be subject to change if/when the mandates ease up, large number of requests occur, or for voluminous lengths of content.  However, chargebacks will not occur without discussing a course of action with the person requesting live auto-captions.

Q: Can I request live auto-captions for any Zoom meetings that are not related to North Idaho College?

A: Most likely, such a request will be denied, but it never hurts to ask.  Contact Jeremy Seda (jeremy.seda@nic.edu) if you have further questions.

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