Advanced Caption Output Settings

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 a 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.

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.

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.

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.

Vertical Positioning: Will only appear if you have turned on caption auto placement. The setting chosen will determine how the captions move when necessary. See our Caption Auto-Placement article for more information.

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.