How to Get Closed Captioning on a VLC

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VLC is a free and open-source media player which runs on a variety of operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. VLC supports closed captioning, a system of displaying text for the hearing impaired which summarizes the audio in a media file. Closed captions are distinct from subtitles in that they include more information than just the spoken words and are implemented differently than plain-text subtitle files. VLC supports enabling closed captioning support and selecting it on a per-file basis from its menu.

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Step 1

Download and install the latest version of VLC from the official website, if you don't already have it (see Resources). Older versions of VLC don't have closed captioning support.

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Step 2

Open VLC by clicking "Start," "All Programs," "VideoLAN" and "VLC Media Player."

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Step 3

Click "Tools" and "Preferences."

Step 4

Click "All" under "Show Settings" at the bottom of the preferences window.

Step 5

Click the arrow to the left of "Input / Codecs" in the preferences window and click the arrow to the left of "Subtitles Codecs" under it.

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Step 6

Click "VBI & Teletext" in the list.

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Step 7

Click the "Teletext Text Subtitles" box and click "Save."

Step 8

Open a media file containing closed captioning information by clicking "Media," clicking "Open File," navigating to the file and double-clicking it.

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Step 9

Click the "Video" menu, hover the cursor over "Subtitles Track" in the menu and click "Teletext" in the list.

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