Glossary
Closed captions vs subtitles
Updated · By the WithTranscript team · How we checked
Closed captions vs subtitles: Closed captions transcribe speech and also describe other sounds (music, laughter, who is speaking) for viewers who cannot hear the audio; subtitles assume you can hear and only render the dialogue, often translated.
"Closed" means the viewer can turn them on or off, as opposed to "open" captions burned into the picture. On YouTube the CC button shows whichever caption or subtitle tracks the video has, including auto-generated ones.
For transcript tools the difference matters less than the source: creator-uploaded tracks (captions or subtitles) are usually cleaner than auto-generated ones, and translated subtitle tracks are a translation, not what was said.
How WithTranscript handles it
WithTranscript prefers the video's original-language speech-recognition track, because that is the one that marks speaker changes, and shows the transcript in the spoken language.