Looking for a way to contribute to WordPress.tv? We’re excited to announce that you can now help caption and subtitle WordPress.tv videos with Amara. If you don’t have an account, sign up at Amara.org — doing so allows you to save your subtitles in the middle of the process and resume later where you left off.

Steps to caption and subtitle videos:

Select a video’s download link.

 To the right of every video on WordPress.tv, you’ll see a list of details. Under Download, choose the Med link next to the MP4 option.

Uploading a new caption file

If you would like to caption or subtitle a video that does not yet have captions in your language, you can follow these steps to upload your own caption file:

Step 1 – Copy the video URL

Locate the “Med” link in the Download section of the sidebar.

Right-click on that link and select the Copy Video URL option.

Step 2 – launch video in Amara

Go to http://www.amara.org/en/videos/create/ and enter the video URL you copied from wordpress.tv.

Next click “Subtitle Me” and follow the instructions provided by Amara.org

Step 3 – Download the translation file

Once the video is subtitled at Amara.org, click on the link under View Subtitles, to the left of the video display.

Next click on the Download drop-down menu and select DFXP format.

When you have downloaded the caption file to your computer, you should have a file that looks something like this:

wordcamp-minneapolis-2014.dfxp

In order to have this file work with wordpress.tv (which only accepts .ttml files) just edit the file extension to change it from .dfxp to .ttml, like so:

wordcamp-minneapolis-2014.ttml

Step 4 – Upload your caption file

Return to the WordPress.tv video page, and click on the “Subtitle this video” button at the bottom of the sidebar.

On the next page, choose your file for upload, select your language from the drop-down selector, and then click Submit button.

Success! Your subtitles will go through a short moderation process, and then you can enjoy your newly captioned video in all its text-enriched glory. Thank you for helping out! 🙂

Translating an existing caption file

Step 1 – Locate the existing .ttml file

Load the page for the video you would like to add a translation for. You can find the TTML link under the Subtitles section of the video information sidebar

Step 2 – Download and open the .ttml file

Download the existing caption file and then open it in a simple text-editor like Notepad or TextEdit. Avoid using applications like Word or Dreamweaver, because they will distort the TTML markup.

Step 3 – Translate subtitle text

Inside the downloaded file, you’ll see the speaker’s words surrounded by <p> and </p> tags. Translate all of the speaker’s words into your language, but be careful not to change the surrounding <p> tags at all.

Step 4 – Save and upload your translated caption file

When you’re finished, save the file—being sure to use the original TTML file extension—and return to the WordPress.tv video page, then click on the “Subtitle this video” button at the bottom of the sidebar.

On the next page, choose your file for upload, select your language from the drop-down selector, and then click Submit button.

Success! Your subtitles will go through a short moderation process, and then you can enjoy your newly captioned video in all its text-enriched glory. Thank you for helping out! 🙂