Captions and overlays

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Keep a cut readable by fixing its words first, then placing the captions and adding any extra picture or text. Start with a project that has finished transcribing.

Correct the words

Edit a recognized word in the transcript when its caption is wrong, or select the words and choose Edit → Edit Caption… (⇧⌘E). The correction keeps the recorded source interval: changing “flower” to “flour” does not synthesize a different voice or move the cut.

Use Edit → Use Original Caption to remove a correction and show the recognized word again. Cutting words and correcting words are separate actions, so check the preview and use Undo when you intended the other one.

To keep a word in the video and leave it out of the captions, select it and choose Edit → Hide from Captions (⇧⌘H). Press Return between two words to start a new caption there.

Place captions

Select the captions in the preview. Drag them to move them, or drag a corner to change their size. Watch the full line at the chosen width, especially long names and phrases. Preview and export draw captions from the same layout.

View → Show Captions (⇧⌘C) turns captions on or off for the whole video.

Add a picture or another video

Import media inside a main clip to add a child overlay. Its timing belongs to that parent clip, so moving the parent moves the overlay with it. Image overlays begin at the chosen source time and last up to five seconds within the available parent interval. A video overlay ends within that interval.

Change the overlay’s position and scale in the preview, then check its start and end on the timeline. There is one media-overlay lane. Text has its own lane and can overlap a media overlay.

Add text

Choose Text in the preview’s controls, or Edit → Add Text (⌘T), to add text at the playhead. Double-click the text in the preview to edit it, drag it to position it, and choose Typewriter in the Text animation pop-up to type it out. On-screen text is separate from the transcript, so it can introduce a section without changing what the speaker says.

Keep the subject in the frame

Select a main video clip and turn on Follow Subject. The crop then follows the clip’s main subject instead of staying fixed, for example when a landscape recording plays in a portrait video. The preview shows the centered crop until analysis of the clip finishes, and Export waits for it. Follow Subject is unavailable for photos, 360° clips, a clip whose source is missing, and a clip whose whole picture already shows.

Check the result

Play across each boundary, then export a short result to inspect the final caption wrapping and overlay timing. The command format describes the corresponding agent operations.