Your client archive is uncaptioned. That's now a deliverable.
Studios uploaded years of conferences, weddings, and graduations to Vimeo before auto-captioning existed. Clients are starting to ask for captions. Recaption re-uploads the archive so every video gets them — one flat fee per account.
The backlog every studio carries
A studio's Vimeo account is its whole history: hundreds of client uploads going back to the 2010s. Vimeo auto-captions only videos uploaded after May 25, 2022, so everything older plays without captions.
Vimeo's documented fix is re-uploading — simple for one video, unmanageable as a year-end studio chore across hundreds.
Why captions matter here.
- Clients' own obligations. Corporate and institutional clients increasingly answer to accessibility requirements of their own. Their events need captions; whoever provides them becomes the sticky vendor.
- A cheap line item to sell. Captioning an archive used to mean per-minute transcription quotes. A flat-fee run turns it into an add-on you can price confidently.
- Zero risk to delivered work. Copies are private and tagged [cc]; originals stay exactly as delivered. You present captioned versions when the client signs off.
What a run looks like for a studio
Run it per client account or on your studio account: review the caption split, start the run, and Recaption re-uploads each un-captioned video so Vimeo captions the copy. The emailed original-to-copy list slots straight into your delivery notes.
Questions.
- Can I run this per client?
- Yes — one token and one run per account. Studios usually run their main account first, then offer archive captioning to past clients as a follow-on service.
- Conference talks with multiple speakers?
- Auto captions handle speaker turns reasonably on clean audio, but panel crosstalk and room echo reduce accuracy. Review headline pieces in Vimeo's transcript editor before delivery.
- The client wants human-grade captions.
- Then per-minute transcription is the right tool for those videos — Recaption is for getting good-enough auto captions across the whole archive at once, not for broadcast-legal accuracy on one showpiece.