WebCaptioner: Free Live Transcribe for big screen TVs and laptops

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Mark Rejhon

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There's a great new captioning tool: webcaptioner.com

This is like Live Transcribe except it works on big-screen televisions -- connect your laptop to any big screen.
You simply open the website on a laptop and it will automatically caption everything that goes into the computer's microphone!

It's pretty neat -- free too -- although it only works in the Chrome web browser.

It's a good idea to buy a better microphone (and connect it to your laptop), but it works okay with most laptop microphones in a quiet room.

Now, we have 3 excellent free speech transcribe tools now:
- Live Transcribe (for Android)
- Otter.ai (for iPhone & Android)
- WebCaptioner (for when you need big screen captions for free)
 
I feel bad for anybody who has a TV smaller than 13 inches... that's like from the 60's...
But, your post is for "big screens." Now it's for small ones ... What ?
 
The Silent Seed said:
Mark - I'm not sure I understand. All TV's have built-in captioning regardless of size.
Click to expand...

I wanted to make people are aware of correct information.

The Silent Seed said:
I feel bad for anybody who has a TV smaller than 13 inches... that's like from the 60's...
But, your post is for "big screens." Now it's for small ones ... What ?
Click to expand...

90's actually. :) CRT TV was replaced by modern TV's in 2000's

I had 13 inch CRT TV in early 2000's. I had it on my desk beside my PC.
 
Last edited:
Secretblend said:
I wanted to make people are aware of correct information.



90's actually. :) CRT TV was replaced by modern TV's in 2000's

I had 13 inch CRT TV in early 2000's. I had it on my desk beside my PC.
Click to expand...

I still do have one and am using it with a converter in my bedroom. A label on the back says it was manufactured in January of 1995.

The idea behind the WebCaptioner appears to be to use a mic connected to a computer that has the site running on the Chrome browser and connect that computer to the TV so everyone in the room can read what the speaker using the mic in that room is saying. If I understand right, it is not using the TV to pickup an over the air broadcast.
 
The Silent Seed said:
Mark - I'm not sure I understand. All TV's have built-in captioning regardless of size.
Click to expand...

WAIT
WAIT
WAIT
WAIT, You are all misunderstanding me

I'm not talking about closed captioning for TV.

I'm talking about real-time captioning for speaking.
Like an interpretor!

Like people speaking in the same room in front of the TV, and the TV automatically captioning your friend/family in front of you.
Just like a stenographer, except it's the web browser doing the captioning for you!

1. Open www.webcaptioner.com on your laptop
2. Click "Start Captioning"
3. Let your friend or family speak in the same room
4. The laptop instantly automatically captions everything your friend or family said!!!!

Free....No $100/hour stenographer....Same thing....but FREE.
No need for interpretor.
WebCaptioner.com is your free AI interpretor

And laptop can be connected to a TV, which is useful for classrooms / lectures / etc. Big screen captions for meeting rooms, classrooms, etc.
Captioning for teachers
Captioning for lectures
Captioning for birthday parties
Captioning for classrooms
It's a free AI voice-to-text interpretor that instantly activates within 1 second of button click
 
Last edited:
Also..... I'm also even using it to
caption Skype calls / FaceTime calls / Facebook Video calls

Doing this for video calls is a bit complicated but it's like Captioned Telephone, but with video -- and can be used by anybody in any country in the world (because it uses the free Google Captioning service.... no humans needed.... 95-99% accurate with English language if no background noise)

1581445695740.png


An instant Interpretor for your computer audio
Technical instrutcions to caption computer audio in real time:
  1. To caption computer audio without a second device, I needed to:
  2. Install free virtual audio cable software (VB-AUDIO) from https://www.vb-audio.com/Cable/
    The VB-AUDIO behaves sort of like a loopback cable from headphone-output to microphone-input, except via a virtual audio driver.
  3. Configure Windows 10 to output speaker audio straight into microphone (Start -> "Sound Settings" -> Output -> VB-AUDIO) so I can caption the laptop sounds without letting the laptop make noises.
  4. Then configure Google Chrome (via chrome://settings/content/microphone configured to VB-AUDIO...) to use the virtual microphone, and open WebCaptioner.com or Otter to caption another computer application's audio!
  5. Then I clicked the speaker icon in the system tray to select "Cable Input (VB-AUDIO)".
  6. Then I open www.webcaptioner.com (or otter.ai) and click "Start Captioning"
  7. Once it's done that way, I can launch the application I want to caption.
  8. Drag the windows around so you can see both the captions (in Chrome) and your application at the same time (the app you want to caption, such as a Skype video call)
The above magic makes it possible for me to real-time caption any computer application. Then it works with any video conferencing application, like GoToMeeting, WebEx, Skype, Facebook Messenger Video (the Windows 10 app), or even FaceTime (there are Mac versions of virtual audio cable too). It even works with Twitch Streaming, Periscope, Facebook Live, and other streaming audio (YouTube channels with no AutoCaption), any software can now get captioned even if it doesn't have captions!

You can even caption your movies that doesn't have captions too.....Play your video file that has no captions, and you get captions for a captionless video file (instantly, in real-time, no waiting)
_________

The above instructions are optional
WebCaptioner has an Easy Mode.
(if you only need to caption a person speaking to you -- like Google Live Transcribe on Android)

Mind you, you don't need to do the above, if you just want to caption room audio (like captioning a friend/family member speaking in front of you). For that, you only need to open www.webcaptioner.com and click "Start Captioning".

Then your PC or Mac or laptop becomes your instant interpretor!
 
Last edited:
You said it needs to be a quiet room, with no background noise. Now you're saying it's fine for classrooms, and....... parties?
 
The Silent Seed said:
You said it needs to be a quiet room, with no background noise. Now you're saying it's fine for classrooms, and....... parties?
Click to expand...

Mark Rejhon said:
There's a great new captioning tool: webcaptioner.com

This is like Live Transcribe except it works on big-screen televisions -- connect your laptop to any big screen.
You simply open the website on a laptop and it will automatically caption everything that goes into the computer's microphone!

It's pretty neat -- free too -- although it only works in the Chrome web browser.

It's a good idea to buy a better microphone (and connect it to your laptop), but it works okay with most laptop microphones in a quiet room.

Now, we have 3 excellent free speech transcribe tools now:
- Live Transcribe (for Android)
- Otter.ai (for iPhone & Android)
- WebCaptioner (for when you need big screen captions for free)
Click to expand...

I bolded part where he was talking about that.

He is saying that if you use laptop microphone, it works better in a quiet room. If room is noisy then it'll work better with a plugged in microphone.
 
Last edited:
Mark Rejhon said:
There's a great new captioning tool: webcaptioner.com

This is like Live Transcribe except it works on big-screen televisions -- connect your laptop to any big screen.
You simply open the website on a laptop and it will automatically caption everything that goes into the computer's microphone!

It's pretty neat -- free too -- although it only works in the Chrome web browser.

It's a good idea to buy a better microphone (and connect it to your laptop), but it works okay with most laptop microphones in a quiet room.

Now, we have 3 excellent free speech transcribe tools now:
- Live Transcribe (for Android)
- Otter.ai (for iPhone & Android)
- WebCaptioner (for when you need big screen captions for free)
Click to expand...
does it work on computer??
 
The Silent Seed said:
You said it needs to be a quiet room, with no background noise. Now you're saying it's fine for classrooms, and....... parties?
Click to expand...
I can accurately capture a teachers voice if I sit in the front row and use a good microphone. Preferably directional so I'm not picking much classroom chatter behind me.

Alternatively, Otter has a fantastic feature where you can use a 2nd phone as a cordless microphone.

1. Both devices (the mobile device for mic, the mobile device for captions) must be Internet connected.
(Note: Can be WiFi only, or WiFi sharing, to just use only 1 cellphone plan).
1. Start Otter on the 2nd phone, press record button, and give it to the teacher / presenter / lecturer
(Note: They can hold it like a microphone, or put in their shirt pocket.)
2. Log into Otter (app or website) on your other device (laptop, iPad, phone) under the same account
3. Open the LIVE recording and you'll be able to see captions streaming in real-time.
4. You can have an unlimited number of caption screens
Multiple people in classroom using their personal phones as caption screens!

You don't even need the Otter app to read captions. The captions can show in a web browser. Any web browser will work, FireFox, Chrome, Edge, for reading the captions from the 2nd phone being used as a microphone.

Otter captioning web links are shareable, so anybody you give the Otter link to, can get another simultaneous copy of realtime captions streaming to their phone too. So everyone can have their captionscreen. Like 5 deaf people listening to captions from the same teacher.

This is different from WebCaptioner, but quite useful when you want to be able to give livecaption links (similiar to streamtext Remote CART -- but for free).
 
Last edited:
Mark Rejhon said:
Also..... I'm also even using it to
caption Skype calls / FaceTime calls / Facebook Video calls

Doing this for video calls is a bit complicated but it's like Captioned Telephone, but with video -- and can be used by anybody in any country in the world (because it uses the free Google Captioning service.... no humans needed.... 95-99% accurate with English language if no background noise)

View attachment 28956


An instant Interpretor for your computer audio
Technical instrutcions to caption computer audio in real time:
  1. To caption computer audio without a second device, I needed to:
  2. Install free virtual audio cable software (VB-AUDIO) from https://www.vb-audio.com/Cable/
    The VB-AUDIO behaves sort of like a loopback cable from headphone-output to microphone-input, except via a virtual audio driver.
  3. Configure Windows 10 to output speaker audio straight into microphone (Start -> "Sound Settings" -> Output -> VB-AUDIO) so I can caption the laptop sounds without letting the laptop make noises.
  4. Then configure Google Chrome (via chrome://settings/content/microphone configured to VB-AUDIO...) to use the virtual microphone, and open WebCaptioner.com or Otter to caption another computer application's audio!
  5. Then I clicked the speaker icon in the system tray to select "Cable Input (VB-AUDIO)".
  6. Then I open www.webcaptioner.com (or otter.ai) and click "Start Captioning"
  7. Once it's done that way, I can launch the application I want to caption.
  8. Drag the windows around so you can see both the captions (in Chrome) and your application at the same time (the app you want to caption, such as a Skype video call)
The above magic makes it possible for me to real-time caption any computer application. Then it works with any video conferencing application, like GoToMeeting, WebEx, Skype, Facebook Messenger Video (the Windows 10 app), or even FaceTime (there are Mac versions of virtual audio cable too). It even works with Twitch Streaming, Periscope, Facebook Live, and other streaming audio (YouTube channels with no AutoCaption), any software can now get captioned even if it doesn't have captions!

You can even caption your movies that doesn't have captions too.....Play your video file that has no captions, and you get captions for a captionless video file (instantly, in real-time, no waiting)
_________

The above instructions are optional
WebCaptioner has an Easy Mode.
(if you only need to caption a person speaking to you -- like Google Live Transcribe on Android)

Mind you, you don't need to do the above, if you just want to caption room audio (like captioning a friend/family member speaking in front of you). For that, you only need to open www.webcaptioner.com and click "Start Captioning".

Then your PC or Mac or laptop becomes your instant interpretor!
Click to expand...
Good information. Thanks.
 
Mark Rejhon said:
WAIT
WAIT
WAIT
WAIT, You are all misunderstanding me

I'm not talking about closed captioning for TV.

I'm talking about real-time captioning for speaking.
Like an interpretor!

Like people speaking in the same room in front of the TV, and the TV automatically captioning your friend/family in front of you.
Just like a stenographer, except it's the web browser doing the captioning for you!

1. Open www.webcaptioner.com on your laptop
2. Click "Start Captioning"
3. Let your friend or family speak in the same room
4. The laptop instantly automatically captions everything your friend or family said!!!!

Free....No $100/hour stenographer....Same thing....but FREE.
No need for interpretor.
WebCaptioner.com is your free AI interpretor

And laptop can be connected to a TV, which is useful for classrooms / lectures / etc. Big screen captions for meeting rooms, classrooms, etc.
Captioning for teachers
Captioning for lectures
Captioning for birthday parties
Captioning for classrooms
It's a free AI voice-to-text interpretor that instantly activates within 1 second of button click
Click to expand...
Thanks for this information. After I switched from an Android phone with Live Scribe to an iPhone, I have not been able to use captioning applications as the iPhone has a weak microphone and only picks up 2-3 ft for transcribing in the face-to-face conversation for the deaf. Plus, they charge monthly for this.
I can use this application on my Macbook for meetings and speech to text!! I just tried in on my Macbook, works great!
Thank you so much!!
 
I've been waiting for this for years to help my son.I want to run it on a large screen so he can accurately hear what family/visitors are saying.Hurray!!!
 
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