The Amara Public Workspace is a collaborative space on the Amara.org platform where anyone can join in and create subtitles and make content more accessible to public content hosted on the internet. 

Before You Begin

• Log in to your Amara.org account.

  • If you are new to Amara.org Create your free Amara Username.

  • Amara Public Workspace does not host or store videos.

  • If you want to upload videos from your computer or GDrive please check out options for Amara Teams, or contact our team at [email protected]!

  • For public videos we only import video information from the video hosting site.

  • Video must be embeddable and public on the video hosting site.

    • Check in host site settings, and whitelist if necessary.

    • If a video is private, users will not be able to view it.

    • If a video is password protected, users must enter the password to view.

• Add a video URL from a hosting site.

  • We support mp3, mp4, ogv, webm file formats.

  • These formats are compatible with the Amara.org editor and the Amara.org embedder.

  • You can upload a Dropbox video to Amara.org, but there is an important part of the URL that must be changed in the Add Video window (see Dropbox section below, which also includes information on how to locate the URL in Dropbox).

  • The URL of the video on a video hosting site such as YouTube and Vimeo is in the address bar of the video page:

• Videos you submit to the Amara Public Workspace:

  • Should not have copyright issues or sensitive information.

  • Should be set to public so other users can view them.

    • YouTube: 

      • Public videos

      • Unlisted videos

    • Vimeo Permissions:

      • Public, Password, and Hide on Vimeo will allow the video to play on Amara.org.

      • Videos set to Private will not play on Amara.org.

      • Password protected videos can be added to Amara.org:

        • Users must enter password to view

        • If your Vimeo videos are in a showcase that is password protected the video will not play in Amara.org. Remove the video from the showcase to add it to Amara.org. When subtitles are complete you can add the video back to the showcase with the subtitles.

• Embed: you must add amara.org to Specific Domains.

• You can also Connect Vimeo to Amara with your username or team to have the subtitles export automatically when they are complete.

• Dropbox:

  • Public/Anyone with the link can view

  • Password protected videos 

    • Users must enter password to view

• Videos added to the Amara Public Workspace that have no subtitling activity after 30 days will automatically be removed from Amara.org.

• You can add videos back at any time when you are ready to begin creating subtitles.

• Videos where subtitles are started but there is no activity for 30 days will not be subject to removal from Amara Public Workspace.

Deleting a video from Amara.org:

• Amara.org is a collaborative platform. If you remove a video, you might delete someone else's contribution. Therefore, we ask that you do not request to remove videos once they have been added to Amara if contributions have been made by other members.

• You may delete a video that you added to Amara.org if you are the only contributor to the video.  You can follow the instructions in the Delete Videos or Subtitles on Amara article.

• Please ensure you agree to the Amara Terms of Service and are comfortable making your video available for captioning and translation for the long haul, before you submit the video.

Add publicly hosted videos to the Amara Public Workspace 

After creating an Amara.org user account:

1. From the Amara.org home page, go to the Amara Public Workspace.

2. Click the Add Videos button.

3. Copy and paste the URL from the public hosting site.

4. Select the language spoken in the video.

5. Click the Add to Amara Public button.

If Amara.org is able to find your video online and recognize the video format, the system will create a Web page for your video and you will be redirected to that video’s page:

If the video you are trying to add has already been added by another user on Amara.org, you will be directed to the public video page created when the video was added to Amara Public.

Add YouTube Shorts to Amara.org

If you wish to add captions or translations to YouTube Shorts you can follow these steps to add a YouTube Short to Amara.org:

• Right click anywhere on the video on YouTube.

• When the black pop-up menu appears, select Copy video URL.

• If Copy video URL gives an error when adding to Amara please use Copy video URL at current time. 

• The URL that gets copied to your clipboard will allow you to add the YouTube Short to Amara.org so you can start creating captions.

  • Sample of a YouTube Shorts URL: https://youtu.be/SLHUd93FXLp

If you still receive an error when adding YouTube shorts try these steps below to create the correct URL format.

Copy the URL and edit the URL to the correct format:

• If the Copy URL step above gives the URL format shown below, this does not work to add the video to Amara.org:

  • https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2yFkBLX8mtI?t=2&feature=share

• Manually edit the URL using the video ID highlighted in red above.

• Add the video ID (example: 2yFkBLX8mtI) to this URL format:

•  https://youtu.be/

• This URL format can be added to Amara.org: 

  • https://youtu.be/2yFkBLX8mtI

Add a Dropbox Video to Amara.org

You can upload a Dropbox video to Amara.org, but there is an important part of the URL that must be changed in the Add Video window:

the last part of the URL string must be changed from dl=0 to raw=1

For example:

• Original URL: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5nu5ears8679wpi/WIN_20200608_09_27_36_Pro.mp4?dl=0

• Edited URL:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5nu5ears8679wpi/WIN_20200608_09_27_36_Pro.mp4?raw=1

1. Copy the Dropbox URL to your computer's clipboard: in Dropbox, click on the Share button, then the Copy link that appears in the popup window.

2. Click on the Add videos button.

3. Paste the Dropbox URL into the Video URL field.

4. Change the last part of the URL string from dl=0 to raw=1:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5nu5ears8679wpi/WIN_20200608_09_27_36_Pro.mp4?raw=1

5. Select the language spoken in the video.

6. Click on the Add to Amara Public button.

Troubleshoot adding videos to Amara.org

• Videos must be embeddable.

  • Amara.org does not host video or audio records.

    • We only store subtitles and some related data

    • Amara.org plays videos from their source location

  • Whitelist www.amara.org for embedding on video source site

• If the video belongs to an Amara.org private team with proprietary videos you will be unable to add the video to the Amara Public Workspace:

View your Videos

Click Amara Public Workspace at the top of the page to view the videos you already added to the public workspace.

This will open a list of video submissions with titles and thumbnails. 

• Click on Add/Edit subtitles to open the video card.

• The video card will list any subtitles already started and allow you to add new languages to begin new subtitles.

Private Workspace on Amara.org 

If you are interested in a private workspace where you can not only add YouTube and Vimeo URLs but also add videos from your local system or GDrive storage, please check out options for Amara Teams, or contact our Platform team at [email protected]!

Thank you for your contributions to support an inclusive and accessible media ecosystem!

If you have any questions or suggestions, please share your feedback!

• To submit a quick ticket, click No in the Did you find it helpful link below.