When was the last time you attended an event that was only in-person? Exactly. Hybrid events are more common than ever, allowing companies, brands, and communities to expand their access for both in-person and virtual audiences. With multifaceted events, it’s essential to understand how to add captions seamlessly. Hybrid events have many moving parts, including live production, livestreams, rewatchable videos, and, depending on event size, multiple speakers and sessions across several days. When planning a hybrid event, adding captioning isn’t always simple. But at Caption Pros, we are experts in workflows, platforms, and best practices for elevating your impact with captions.
Hybrid Event Captioning Workflows
When hosting hybrid events, strong technical capabilities are just as important as accurate captioning. It’s essential that workflows are sufficient to support your multiplatform events, where captions need to appear consistently across different screens, devices, and outputs. Captioning workflows are the technical processes that take spoken words and deliver captions to viewers, ensuring accuracy and synchronization across all platforms. Connecting captioners early on in the planning process with the AV and production teams gives them time to develop the best workflows for the event.
Here’s how captioners develop intentional workflows for hybrid events:
Step 1: Assess the platforms and locations where captions need to appear.
Depending on the event’s size and complexity, this often starts with establishing a clear, accurate agenda that specifies where captions are required for each session and the timeframe. A few common display locations include:
- Large screens or displays at the physical event
- Virtual meeting or streaming platforms
- Portable devices
- On-demand or rewatchable recordings
This assessment helps determine which captioning workflows will be implemented throughout the event.
Step 2: Establish a clear audio path.
Often the event’s AV and production team work with the captioner to ensure a high-quality audio feed is routed to them. Identifying audio paths may look like microphones at live events, audio from virtual platforms like Zoom, or broadcast feeds. Ensuring audio is accurate and clear is a critical step in implementing successful workflows.
Step 3: Choosing accurate captioning workflows.
Once you understand where the captions need to be displayed and where the audio is sourced, captioners can accurately implement the right workflows to deliver seamless captioning to your event. Most common workflows for hybrid events include:
- On-Site Display: Creating captions, with a realtime audio feed, and displaying them live on large screens, using projectors, or other physical devices at the event.
- Platform-Integrated: Captions are created and delivered directly into online platforms such as Zoom, Teams, Adobe Connect, or other webinar software, allowing attendees to see them in real time.
- QR code: Distributing a QR code for ease of participants accessing a URL to display captions on any smart device.
- Broadcast/RTMP: Captions are generated and embedded directly in livestreams or recordings using the 608/708 standards.
Step 4: Integrate and test captioning.
After establishing workflows, it’s time to connect all the moving parts! Including:
- Audio
- Broadcast and streaming tools
- Livestream encoders
- Technical display
This is the step where everything comes together! Being thorough when creating workflows for an event helps ensure the captioner can seamlessly take the speaker’s words in real time and send them through the livestream system. It’s essential to double-check workflows and run live testing to ensure all components are compatible and ready. Captioners will also continue to monitor captioning throughout the event and adjust workflows or add new ones to ensure captions display accurately across all platforms.
Selecting The Right Platform For Your Hybrid Event
Hybrid events often rely on multiple platforms and production tools to blend in-person and digital experiences. Understanding which platforms and tools are right for your event, taking into account the captioner’s expertise, audience preferences, and the functions they support, can help ensure a successful event with captions delivered seamlessly to all outputs.
Common platforms used for hybrid event captioning:
Depending on your event setup, captions may be delivered through one or more of the following platform types:
Virtual event & webinar platforms
These platforms often have built-in captioning integrations, and live captioners can connect directly to these platforms to deliver real-time captions for virtual attendees.
- Zoom
- Teams
- WebEx
- Adobe Connect
Livestream & Broadcast Platforms
Depending on your event size and type, you may be using more complex streams with captions embedded in the livestream using RTMP workflows. These captions appear directly on platforms such as:
- OBS Studio
- vMix
- YouTube Live
- Vimeo Livestream
On-Site Display Systems
For in-person displays, a clean, fluent captioning output is essential when projected live for a larger audience to read. These caption outputs are typically on stage screens or using projectors and may include:
- PowerPoint or Keynote
- Adobe Premiere
- ProPresenter
- PlaybackPro / Mitti
Compatibility Matters
At Caption Pros, we know every platform handles captions differently. That’s why we work directly with your event’s AV and production crew to ensure workflows for hybrid or in-person events work together with onsite technology to integrate captioning across all systems. Caption Pros captions hundreds of hybrid events each year, making us experts in event complexities and technical requirements and equipped to handle any technical or last-minute errors.
Best Practices from Experts
Delivering accurate captioning takes planning, partnership, and collaboration to ensure your hybrid event is prepared. Unpredictable issues happen, but prioritizing best practices at the start of planning allows the captioning team and the event team to anticipate challenges, develop backup plans, and ensure captions continue without interruption.
- Plan early
- Bring your captioning partner into the early stages of planning
- Share agendas, session details, and event specifications
- Establish workflows early
- Don’t skip testing
- Run audio testing to ensure captioners and the audience will have high-quality, uninterrupted audio
- Run a technical rehearsal to ensure all platforms integrate together
- Check caption displays on both virtual and in-person viewing outputs
- Run a live test to identify any potential delays or errors
- Have a backup plan
- Talk through the “what-ifs” and create a plan
- Establish roles and points of contact for troubleshooting
- Ensure everyone has a clear channel of communication throughout the event
- Make sure each department understands captioning workflows
- Have backup workflows, platforms, and extra equipment ready and available
- Think about after the event
- Have a plan for post-content access in place
- Prepare workflows and platforms to support postproduction captions for any content available after the event
Partner With Caption Pros For Your Next Hybrid Event
If you’re looking for a captioning partner that has the experience, technical knowledge, and reliable support needed to ensure accurate captioning for your hybrid event, Caption Pros offers the level of service that high-profile events demand. Our team is committed to helping you deliver an inclusive, polished experience for every attendee—whether they are joining online, in person, or around the world. Connect with us today!