Zoom partners Otter.ai for live captions on video meetings, webinars

Zoom has partnered with Otter.ai for live captions on the video conferencing platform. Zoom users will now be able to enable live captioning in their video meetings. The new feature is part of Otter Lie Notes that was introduced for Zoom subscribers earlier this year.

Live captioning powered by Otter.ai is available only to Zoom Pro subscribers or higher. This feature can be used for both video meetings and webinars as well. Live captioning will be available as an option within Zoom for Otter for Business which also offers live transcript for meetings.

To use live captioning on Zoom, users must ensure the Otter Live Notes tool is enabled. Once this is done, users can tap on the closed captions button below to active live captions. The live captions will appear at the bottom of the screen turning every spoken word into text. Users can also transcribe the live caption through the Otter Live Notes browser tab. Here, the API token from the closed captions button has to be copied and pasted on Otter Live Notes. While the live captioning goes on, a transcript of the call will also be made on the Otter Live Notes browser.

Live captioning will make it easier for users to better understand what the speaker is saying in general, and in scenarios where there’s some issue with the audio. Other platforms such as Google Meet and Microsoft Teams already have built-in live captions. Zoom’s free users will not have access to live captions as it’s available only to Zoom Pro, Business and Enterprise subscribers.