Ingesting WebVTT Files

Adding closed captions to MP4 renditions

In addition to adding text tracks to your HLS and/or DASH renditions, you can add 608 closed captions to progressive MP4 renditions by including the "embed_closed_caption": true flag in your WebVTT ingest request.

To embed closed captions for a video you are ingesting, be sure to use an ingest profile that includes one or more MP4 renditions. If you are adding text tracks/closed captions to an existing video, be sure it has at least one MP4 rendition, or re-transcode with an ingest profile that will include MP4.

If you are using Cloud Playout, note that you can now import these closed captions into your channel to provide them to your viewers.

Notes

• The languages currently supported for 608 embedded captions are: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, and Dutch.
• For embedded 608 captions only, only European (Latin) characters are supported. Double-byte languages such as Chinese and Japanese are not supported.
• If the source file already contains 608 closed captions, those will not be retained in any MP4 renditions.instead new closed captions will be embedded using the contents of the ingested captions.
• Closed captions currently cannot be added while you are retranscoding video - you must be ingesting or replacing the video. Retranscode jobs will support this feature in a future release.
• This feature cannot be used when you are requesting auto captions.
• If your account is enabled for Cloud Playout, you can verify that the closed captions were added by including the video in a channel (Cloud Playout channels always use MP4 renditions).

Setup

The setup for Dynamic Ingest requests is the same, whether you are ingesting a video, images, a WebVTT file, or all of these. For full details of the request body fields, see the API Reference.

Request URL

        https://ingest.api.brightcove.com/v1/accounts/account_id/videos/video_id/ingest-requests

Authentication

Authentication requires an access token passed as a Bearer token in an Authorization header:

        Authorization: Bearer {access_token}

Note on S3

If your WebVTT will be pulled from a protected S3 bucket, you will need to set a bucket policy to allow Video Cloud to access the files. See Using Dynamic Ingest with S3 for details.

Ingest WebVTT files

You can also add WebVTT captions to your video or upload them for an existing video using Dynamic Ingest:

Add text tracks during video ingestion

Request URL

        https://ingest.api.brightcove.com/v1/accounts/account_id/videos/video_id/ingest-requests

Method

POST

Sample request body

{
  "master": {
      "url": "https://support.brightcove.com/test-assets/videos/Great_Blue_Heron.mp4"
  },
  "text_tracks": [
      {
          "url": "https://support.brightcove.com/test-assets/captions/herons.vtt",
          "srclang": "en",
          "kind": "captions",
          "label": "EN",
          "default": true,
          "status" : "published",
          "embed_closed_caption": true
      }
  ]
}

Adding/converting SRT or DFXP

For Dynamic Delivery videos only, you can ingest SRT or DFXP files in the same way. The Video Cloud ingest system will automatically convert them to WebVTT format and add them to the video.

{
  "text_tracks": [
    {
      "url": "http://media.brightcove.com/captions/Water.dfxp",
      "srclang": "fr",
      "kind": "captions",
      "label": "français",
      "default": true,
      "status" : "published",
      "embed_closed_caption": true
    }
  ]
}

Add text tracks existing videos

Adding text tracks to existing videos is exactly the same, except that you do not need any of the video information or the profile in the request body. unless you are requesting closed captions to be added to MP4 renditions - in that case, you will need to replace the video

Request URL

        https://ingest.api.brightcove.com/v1/accounts/account_id/videos/video_id/ingest-requests

Method

POST

Sample request body - no closed captions requested

{
  "text_tracks": [
    {
      "url": "http://some.site.com/captions/for_video/Water-in-Motion.vtt",
      "srclang": "es",
      "kind": "captions",
      "label": "Español",
      "default": true,
      "status" : "published",
      "embed_closed_caption": false
    }
  ]
}

Sample request body - closed captions requested

{
  "master": {
      "url": "https://support.brightcove.com/test-assets/videos/Great_Blue_Heron.mp4"
  },
  "text_tracks": [
      {
          "url": "https://support.brightcove.com/test-assets/captions/herons.vtt",
          "srclang": "en",
          "kind": "captions",
          "label": "EN",
          "default": true,
          "status" : "published",
          "embed_closed_caption": true
      }
  ]
}

Adding text tracks to a remote asset video

See Adding Text Tracks to Remote Asset Videos.