DIY closed captions on twitch streams for viewers

So, you're Deaf or hard of hearing and you want to watch a Twitch streamer without missing out on everything they're saying.

Ideally, the Twitch streamer you're watching will have a plugin like Twitch Captions or OBS captions plugin which both use Twitch.tv's CC feature so the captions can be toggled on/off for users who don't want them. Alternatively, they can even have closed captions displayed as part of the video of their stream by following tutorials like this one.

Unfortunately this isn't often the case because streamers are either unaware or don't want to put in the extra effort to configure it. If that's the case, all is not lost! Here's how to set up local closed captioning on your Windows computer by using a combination of software and the free WebCaptioner website which provides real-time captions right in your Chrome browser.

Here's a sample of the closed captions from this Twitch clip.

The captions are pretty good for voice recognition so long as the streamer speaks relatively clearly. They're not as good as the auto-generated captions on Youtube videos, but your mileage may vary depending on the streamer.

Install a virtual audio cable

First, you'll need a virtual audio cable. You can get one for free over here: https://www.vb-audio.com/Cable/.

Run the installer as an administrator, then restart your computer to finalize the install.

Change your sound settings to use the virtual cables

Open up the sound settings pannel. Right-click the sound icon in the bottom right of your taskbar and select "Open Sound Settings".

Now under "Output", select the "CABLE Input" device as your default playback device.

Under "Input", select the "CABLE Output" device as your default recording device.

The "CABLE Input" and "CABLE Output" devices should be installed from the software linked above. If you don't see these devices in your sound settings, make sure you've rebooted your computer after installing them. Otherwise just uninstall and try to install it again.

WebCaptioner setup

Open a Chrome web browser and go to https://webcaptioner.com/captioner. The site doesn't support other browsers like Firefox, so it's gotta be Chrome (or based on Chromium).

Click "start captioning", and it should say "Listening · CABLE Output (VB-Audio Virtual Cable)" at the bottom of the screen. Congrats, you've got live closed captions from the audio of your computer!

You can go in the settings by clicking the bottom-right dots and then the Settings button. The settings let you change the caption font, color, size, capitalization, background color, and vertical/horizontal text alignment.

I personally like to use Roboto with the interim text colored red, text size of 1em, capitalization on proper nouns, full horizontal and vertical alignment, and black background.

Then you can click the bottom-right dots and click "New Window" to make a new popup that you can freely resize.

And that's it. Hope this helps!

[optional] Have audio through speakers and caption at the same time

The setup above assumes you don't care about (or can't hear) the Twitch audio and therefore don't need the audio. This is optional for people who still want the audio to go to their headphones/speakers while using the live captions at the same time.

WIP/TODO

Install VoiceMeeter from https://voicemeeter.com or here.