Captions

Generate subtitles

Click Subtitles in the toolbar, press ⌥⌘T, or choose Generate Subtitles… in a track's panel or header menu. When more than one track has sound the app asks "Generate subtitles from which track?".

The track's sound is mixed down, sent to the transcription service through your account, split into short bars by the rules in Settings › Transcription, and added as a Subtitles track at the top of the timeline. The new track wears the default caption style and opens at once.

Transcription spends credits per minute of audio. The rate is in the Subtitles button's help text and in Settings › Account. A big job asks first. See Account.

Transcripts are cached in the workspace's cache/transcripts/ folder, keyed by what was on the track. Regenerating the same sound costs nothing.

The two panels

Click the subtitles row to open it. The track panel opens on the left and the bars panel on the right. Closing the track panel closes both. Esc first drops the selected bar, then closes the panels.

Edit the bars

The bars panel lists every bar. Edit the words in place. Click a bar's time to seek there. The ⋯ button and the right-click menu offer Merge with next, Split in half and Delete.

In the timeline, click a bar to select it and seek to it. Its right-click menu has Merge with Next, Split in Half, Duplicate Bar and Delete Bar. ⌘D duplicates the selected bar into the room before the next one. ⌫ deletes it.

Style

The Style section of the track panel shows a menu of caption styles, each rendered in its own look, and a preview of the current one. Pick a style there. Edit Styles… opens Settings › Subtitle Styles. See Settings.

Position

Choose Top, Middle or Bottom. For Bottom, the From bottom slider sets the distance up from the bottom edge, from 2% to 45%. 20% keeps captions clear of the Reels UI. Open the Guides menu in the viewer to see the safe areas while you decide.

Re-split and regenerate

Re-split rebuilds the bars from the same transcript with the current rules in Settings › Transcription. It discards edits to the bars.

Regenerate… transcribes a track again into this subtitles track. It asks which track to listen to.

Keywords and language

Settings › Keywords holds names, brands and jargon that are sent with the audio so they are transcribed correctly. Settings › Transcription holds the language and the bar rules. See Settings.

Lock, hide, export

Lock the source track after transcribing if you want the bars to keep lining up with its sound. Lock the subtitles track to freeze the bars, style and position.

The eye hides a subtitles track from the preview and the export. Visible subtitles are burned into every export with the same renderer the viewer uses.