It really does "pay" to caption your online media

The benefits of adding captions to online media like youtube far out weighs the option of leaving the viewer to make their own assumptions about your video.

There are so many times where I have attempted to search for a specific video and without the captions it makes it very difficult to find.

I'm not sure if you have ever watched the show about funny home videos. I believe that the show would not have been so successful without the use of the funny captions being read by the announcer.

Some of the videos were ok, and some of them were hysterical, but by themselves I would not have understood why they were so funny. Generally, the video that wins on the show is a video that is not that funny, but the captions have you rolling on the ground laughing.

I have a cousin who likes to jump his 4x4 jeep and take it off road as much as possible. We took a video of him making his first attempt at jumping his jeep. It was a very sad attempt at jumping and we captioned it "Jerry gets big air in his 4x4".

Needless to say, so many viewers visited his video that he is now being offered money for every person that watches his video. It is safe to say that your video meant something to you when you were taping it.

It is also safe to say that what is funny to you may not be funny to anyone else without explanation. It is like walking into the room in the middle of a joke and not knowing the beginning of the joke.

It really does "pay" to caption your online media so that we can all get full enjoyment out of your video.