Captions

Captions are the words on screen while someone speaks. In cutipAI they sit on their own track at the top of the timeline, so they move with your edit, and you can either draw them into the exported video or save them as a separate file.

Where captions live

Captions sit in the Text panel. Click Text on the rail, then the Captions tab: the caption list fills the panel and the caption style appears in the inspector on the right. The panel remembers the tab you used last. Clicking a caption on the timeline opens the list at that caption. While the Storyboard is open, one click only selects the caption and the board stays; double-click it to open the list. Select any other clip and the inspector shows that clip's own settings; select a caption again to get the caption style back.

Add your first captions

1. Click Text on the rail, then Captions.

2. Move the playhead to where the words should appear and click Add at playhead. A caption two seconds long is added, and a C1 row appears at the top of the timeline. If another caption starts sooner than two seconds later, the new one stops where that one starts.

3. Type the words in the caption's box. A caption holds up to two lines. Click away from the box to keep what you typed.

4. Choose a Look in the inspector — Clean, Boxed or Bold outline. The preview shows it at once.

Import a caption file

Click Import… and choose an SRT (.srt) or WebVTT (.vtt) file. Its captions are placed at the times written in the file.

• If the timeline already has captions, you are asked whether to Replace all of them or Add to them. When you add, a caption from the file wins wherever the two overlap.
• If some captions in the file cannot be read, the ones that can are imported and you are told how many were left out, and the line of the first one.
• If none can be read, nothing is imported and the message names the line to fix.

Formatting inside the file (italics, colours, positions) is not kept: every caption in a project shares one style.

Make captions from your storyboard's dialogue

Click From dialogue. For every clip on the timeline that came from a storyboard shot with spoken dialogue, cutipAI makes one caption per line, inside that clip.

• If the shot's dialogue was voiced, each caption lasts as long as its line was spoken.
• If it was not, the clip's length is shared between the lines by how long each would take to say.

This is free. It reads what your project already holds and starts no generation. A shot whose dialogue is switched off for the render gets no captions. Send your shots to the timeline first; see The storyboard.

Make captions automatically

Auto-captions listens to the timeline's sound and writes the captions for you, timed to the words.

1. On the rail, click Text, then Captions, then Auto-captions.

2. Leave Language on Detect automatically, or choose the language that is spoken. Choosing it helps with short clips, strong accents or a film in more than one language.

3. Click Transcribe. The job runs in the Job Queue, and the captions appear on the timeline and in the list when it finishes.

It hears the whole timeline the way a render would: muted tracks and muted clips are left out. So are clips whose media is offline — the dialog says how many, and their silence is not charged. Relink them in Assets to include them. A new caption starts at a pause, at the end of a sentence, or when a caption would grow past two lines or six seconds.

If the timeline already has captions, the dialog says they will be replaced. Captions you add or change while the job runs are kept. Undo brings the old captions back in one step. Auto-captions works on up to two hours of sound, and the caption track must not be locked.

Edit with the transcript

Auto-captions also keeps every word it heard. The Transcript tab shows them as text, and you can cut the film by deleting words. It costs nothing: it uses the words Auto-captions already found.

1. On the rail, click Text, then Transcript. The words appear in paragraphs, each with its start time. The word being played is underlined.

2. Click a word to move the playhead to it. Shift-click another word to select everything between the two. Esc clears the selection. From the keyboard, the arrow keys move between words, Shift with an arrow extends the selection, and Enter selects a word and moves the playhead to it.

3. Press Delete (or click Delete). That part of the film is cut out of every track — picture, sound and captions — and everything after it moves up to close the gap. Markers after it move too. Undo brings it back in one step.

The words stay tied to the clips they were spoken in: move, trim, speed up or cut a clip on the timeline and its words follow. A word whose part of the clip is no longer on the timeline is gone from the transcript too. Locked tracks are never cut.

Two clean-ups work from the same words:

• Remove filler words selects every "um", "uh", "erm" and similar, so you can check them and then press Delete. It knows the usual fillers in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese.
• Shorten pauses… shortens every pause between words that is longer than the length you choose (one second unless you change it) down to that length. Undo puts them back in one step.

Edit captions in the list

Each caption in the list shows its start, its end and its words.

• Click a caption to select it and move the playhead to its start. The caption under the playhead is marked, and the list follows your selection on the timeline.
• Change a time by typing it as minutes, seconds and frames — for example 00:12:08 — and pressing Enter. A time that would end before it starts, or overlap another caption, is refused with a message.
• Split cuts the caption in two at the playhead and divides its words at the nearest word. The playhead must be inside the caption.
• Merge with next joins a caption to the one after it.
• Delete removes it. A caption whose words you clear is removed when you click away.

Edit captions on the timeline

The C1 row sits above your video tracks and stays in view while they scroll. A caption there is a clip:

• Drag it to move it, and drag either end to make it longer or shorter. A caption has no footage, so it can be as long as you like.
• The trimming tools work on it: Roll moves the cut between two captions, and ripple delete closes the gap.
• Insert, Lift and Extract move captions with the picture, so they stay with the words they belong to.
• The row's badge is its target, and it has buttons to hide, lock and delete it. A hidden caption track is not drawn in the preview or in the export.

There is one caption track for each timeline. Media, transitions and effects cannot be dropped on it. Clicking a caption on the timeline opens the caption list at it. Selecting a caption while another panel is open shows its words in the inspector, with Show in the caption list.

Caption style

The style in the inspector applies to every caption in the project.

• Look — a starting point: Clean, Boxed or Bold outline. Change anything below it and the look reads Custom.
• Font and Size. The size is a share of the picture's height, so captions keep their proportion at any resolution.
• Colour.
• Background — None, an Outline around the letters, or a Box behind them.
• Position — Top, Middle or Bottom — and Offset to nudge it up or down.
• Align — Left, Centre or Right.

A line too wide for the picture wraps onto a second line.

Save your captions as a file

Under the style, choose SRT or WebVTT and click Export captions…. Choose where to save the file. Use it to upload captions alongside your video on a site that shows them as an option viewers can turn on.

Captions in the exported video

When the timeline has captions, the Export dialog shows Burn in captions, turned on.

• On — the captions are drawn into the picture. Everyone sees them.
• Off — the video is clean. Export a caption file as well if you want captions viewers can switch on.

See Exporting your film.

What is not here yet

• More than one caption track, or a different style for one caption.
• Captions that appear word by word.