Captions & Subtitles

The Caption Panel is your central hub for creating, styling, and managing all subtitles in your project. This guide will walk you through everything from manual creation to advanced AI-powered features.

Creating Captions

There are two primary ways to add captions to your timeline:

1. Automatic Generation with AI (Recommended)

The fastest and most efficient way to create accurate, timed captions is by using the built-in Speech-to-Text tool. This AI-powered feature automatically transcribes your audio and generates perfectly synced subtitles, complete with word-level timing for highlighting effects.

For a detailed guide on how to use this feature, please see our blog post: Escape the Typing Grind! Double Your Subtitle Efficiency with AI Speech-to-Text.

2. Manual Creation

You can add captions one by one directly from the Caption Panel:

• Click the "Add Caption" button to place a new, empty caption clip on the timeline at the current playhead position.
• Manually edit the text content for each clip.
• Adjust the Start and End times for each clip to sync it with your audio.

Importing from SRT Files

If you already have a subtitle file, you can import it directly.

1. Open the "Caption" panel.
2. Click the "Import SRT" button.
3. Select your .srt file. The captions will be automatically added to the timeline according to the timestamps in the file.

Styling All Captions (Global Styles)

All captions share a global style that you can edit in the Caption Panel. Any changes made here will apply to all caption clips on the timeline.

• Font & Size: Change the font family, size, line height, and character spacing.
• Colors: Adjust the text color, background color, and background opacity.
• Position & Alignment: Set the captions to appear at the top, center, or bottom of the screen, and align the text left, center, or right.
• Writing Mode: For languages that read from right to left (like Arabic or Hebrew), you can enable the "Right to Left (RTL)" switch to ensure text flows and aligns correctly.

Advanced Caption Features

Highlight Style

This feature makes words change color as they are spoken, creating a "read-along" or highlight effect.

• Enable: Toggle the "Highlight Style" switch.
• How it Works: This effect requires precise, word-level timing data. This data is automatically included when you generate captions using the Speech-to-Text tool. It will not work on manually created or standard SRT-imported captions unless they contain this specific timing information.
• Customization: You can customize the color of the highlighted text and its background. You can even set a separate, larger font size for the highlighted word to make it stand out more.

Secondary Text (Bilingual Subtitles)

This powerful feature allows you to display two lines of subtitles simultaneously, which is perfect for translations or annotations.

• Enable: Toggle the "Secondary Language Style" switch.
• How it Works: After enabling, a second text box will appear for each caption clip in the list. You can type or paste your translated text here.
• Customization: You can style this secondary text independently. This includes setting its font, size, and color. You can also choose its position relative to the main text, either "above" or "below".