Advanced Caption Output Settings

SyncWords gives you the ability to fully customize your captions using advanced features. Take a look below to see a list of all the available options you can adjust in your caption file.

From the Completed Project Page, click “+ New Caption File”. If you have already created one or more Caption File Presets, you can select them from the dropdown. Otherwise, go ahead and fill in the appropriate settings for your caption output formats, including advanced options.

Characters Per Line: This option allows you to specify the maximum characters allowed on each line. You can input anything between 20 and 55 characters. Checking the “Flexible Character Limit” box will allow up to 3 additional characters per line if they lead to more optimal caption segments.

Number of Lines: Choose how many lines of captions appear on the screen at a time. The dropdown menu allows you to choose between the default (2) or 1.

Flexible Character Limit: Turn on Flexible Character Limit and SyncWords will allow up to 3 additional characters per line, if they lead to more optimal caption segmentation.

NOTE: If your file format has strict character limits (like SCC) do not turn this on.

Use Existing Segmentation of Captions: If you have provided SyncWords with an SCC, SRT or transcript that indicates your preferred segmentation, you can select the “Yes” bubble to override the Characters Per Line and Number of Lines settings.

In a transcript, a double line break indicates the beginning of a new caption segment, and a single line break indicates the beginning of a new line within the caption segment. For SCC and SRT files the segmentation of your caption file will be retained but they file will be retimed. If you want to keep the both segmentation and timing information from your SCC or SRT then choose "Yes (Keep Timings)".

Frame Rate: SyncWords will automatically detect the frame rate of any uploaded videos and apply that to your caption file. If the frame rate is not supported or captured properly SyncWords will default to 29.97 Drop Frame. You can adjust the frame rate being used for your caption file via the drop down.

Offset Time: SyncWords will automatically attempt to detect burned in time code on the first frame of any video uploaded and apply that value as an offset to your caption file. You can change that value using the time code option in this section. You can also add or subtract subtract time in seconds from the autosync, by selecting the action from the dropdown menu and inputting the number of seconds you want to offset by. This can be useful if, for example, you add or remove an opening credit roll before the media that you captioned.

Speaker Labels By default, SyncWords includes Speaker Labels, which are unspoken yet included on the transcript to indicate the speaker. If you do not wish to have Speaker Labels included in your caption files, you can select the “Remove” from the dropdown.

Cues: Like Speaker Labels, these are unspoken parts of the transcript. Sound Cues identify non-verbal audio, such as applause or music. Tone Cues indicate the way something is spoken, such as “angrily” or “happily.” By default they are included in your caption files, but you can select “Remove” from the dropdown menu to change this.

Snap to Shot Changes: When snap to shot changes is enabled SW will snap the start or end time of a caption to a nearby shot change if they are within 7 frames of each other. If audio starts 8-11 frames before the shot change, we ensure that the start time of the caption is 12 frames before the shot change. This option is modeled on the Netflix guidelines for handling timings in relation to shot changes.

Close Gaps: To turn on Close Gaps, check the box and input a number in milliseconds. This will make the end time of one caption extend to the start time of the next so there is no gap in between. The number that you specify in milliseconds will serve as the threshold for this action. For example, at 1,000 milliseconds, gaps between segments that run one second or less will be closed.

Caption Separation: To turn on Caption Separation, check the box and input a number in milliseconds. The millisecond value determines how much of a gap is enforced between caption segments so one doesn’t lead directly into another.

When used in combination with the Close Gaps option above, caption separation is applied after gaps are closed.

Caption Linger: Selecting the Caption Linger option will make the captions remain on-screen past the standard end time of a caption, which is synced to the end of the sound event. You can set exactly how many milliseconds past the end of the speech you want the caption to linger.

Target Characters Per Second: Sets a preferred character per second reading rate value.

Target Characters Per Line: Sets a target for the number of characters included per line. This differs from the "Characters per Line" option above which just sets the maximum characters allowed.

Target Characters Per Line Standard Deviation: Determines the weight of the "Target Characters per Line" option. The lower the value, the more the system will attempt to create captions matching your "Target Characters per Line" setting.

Soft Minimum Duration: Set a target minimum caption duration rate. The system will take this value into account when creating caption segments.

Disable Time Borrowing: Enable or Disable the time borrowing feature. See our time borrowing article for more details.

Minimum Caption Duration: Sets the minimum amount of time you see a caption visible on the screen.

Maximum Caption Duration: Sets the maximum amount of time you see a caption visible on the screen.

Output All Caps: SyncWords is able to convert to mixed-case from an all-caps transcript with 98% accuracy. The default setting is to output in the same style as the source, but you can select “Yes” to make a mixed-case transcript all caps or “No” to make an all-caps transcript mixed-case.

Font Color, Background Color, and Font Face: These styling options are all customizable in SyncWords; however, compatibility ultimately depends on the individual file type. The caption file type and media player you use will be the determining factors in your caption styling options.

Font Color: Set the Font Color of your captions. Compatibility ultimately depends on the individual caption file type you are using.

Background Color: Set the Background Color of your captions. Compatibility ultimately depends on the individual caption file type you are using.

Text Outline: Remove the black box and add an outline to your captions. Only applicable to IMSC, DFXP, and TTML outputs. Compatibility ultimately depends on the player you are using to display your captions.

Font Face: Set the Font Face of your captions. Compatibility ultimately depends on the individual caption file type you are using.

Horizontal Alignment: Select where your captions will appear on the screen. Like the styling options above, the caption file type and media player you use will be the determining factors on whether you can designate a particular Alignment.

Line Balance Preference: Sets how lines are balanced within your captions. Entering a positive number will favor top-heavy captions, whereas negative numbers will favor bottom-heavy captions. The default is set to 0 which doesn't favor one way or the other.

Multiple Speaker Penalty: 

Separates the speech of different speakers into another caption when possible. The higher the value the more likely the system will separate speakers in to different captions. 

Penalize Long Silences within Captions

When this is enabled, the system will extend the caption duration of the last caption before silence to the value set in “Penalize Long Silences within Captions Threshold”. This in turn will cause this last caption to not come off the screen when the silence begins but rather stay on screen for the additional amount of seconds added below.

Penalize Long Silences within Captions Threshold

Sets the time in seconds you would like the last caption before a period of silence to remain on screen. “Penalize Long Silences within Captions” must be set to Yes for this value to be considered and applied. 

Penalize Incomplete Sentences

When enabled the system will attempt to keep a sentence in one caption segment when possible.

Line Endings: Specify the line ending format in caption file outputs. Unix (LF), Windows (CRLF), or legacy Mac (CR.)

File Encoding: Choose UTF-8 to preserve all accented and special characters in your caption files. Choose Windows-1252 for compatibility with older, non-Unicode programs, such as Windows Media Player. Windows-1252 will preserve most Western European characters, but will have trouble if used on a non-English operating system. Choose ASCII for a limited character set of 'safe' characters that will work on every system. ASCII will replace accented characters with non-accented equivalents. Em-dash, smart quotes and Microsoft special characters are converted to ASCII equivalents.