Fixing Wrapping Caption Lines in Quicktime and Flash

Wrapping may happen depending on the size of the video image in the player, the operating system (the representation of fonts on the PC is slightly different than the Mac), the line length, and/or the font size.

From your CaptionSync it's pretty easy to fix using any one of these four methods:

1. Shorten the line length (easy)
2. Change the font size from “medium” to “small” (easy)
3. Make the player video width wider to fit the width of the captions (Flash, Real or QuickTime) (hardest)
4. Make the player caption height taller to fit more lines of captions (Flash, Real, or QuickTime) (hard)

To make those changes, go to the Caption/Transcribe tab -> Status of Submissions and click on the AST ID link for the submission. On the Submission Details page, select the Click here to Redo link, then click the Advanced Settings button and alter the appropriate settings. Select Change Settings – Use original transcript (or one of the others in the drop down if you've made changes to the transcript) then press Submit Redo. Thereafter you will receive revised results.

Alternatively, you can modify your existing result files using any Text Editor software to accomplish the same thing for #2, #3, or #4 above (for #1 you need to do a redo) as follows.

tts:fontSize="12"

to some smaller number.

tts:fontSize="10"

Consider if we originally have something looking like this:

{size:20}

to some smaller number; e.g.

{size:14}

That's it. This font change will result in something like this:

{width:320}

to some smaller number; e.g.

{width:380}

This change will result in something like this (though note that if you're using a SMIL, this caption item would get clipped at the sides without modifying the .qt.smil as well (laid out in OPTION 2B):

...
<layout>
<root-layout height="295" width="330" background-color="black"/>
<region height="240" width="320" background-color="black" left="5"
top="5" id="videoregion"/>
<region height="40" width="320" background-color="#000000" left="5"
top="245" id="textregion"/>
</layout>
...

To add - say 60 pixels you'll need to increase each of the width= items by 60 (lines 9, 10, and 12). You probably also want to center the video within this wider player by changing left=“5” on line 9 to left=“35” (adding half of the increased width):

...
<layout>
<root-layout height="295" width="390" background-color="black"/>
<region height="240" width="380" background-color="black" left="35"
top="5" id="videoregion"/>
<region height="40" width="380" background-color="#000000" left="5"
top="245" id="textregion"/>
</layout>
...

This will result in something like this:

Note that in this case, the caption pane is not quite tall enough, so we'll need to proceed with OPTION 3 (though OPTION 3 can also be done by itself).

...
<layout>
<root-layout height="295" width="330" background-color="black"/>
<region height="240" width="320" background-color="black" left="5"
top="5" id="videoregion"/>
<region height="40" width="320" background-color="#000000" left="5"
top="245" id="textregion"/>
</layout>
...

To add - say 40 pixels you'll need to increase the first and third height= items by 40 (lines 9 and 12). e.g.

...
<layout>
<root-layout height="335" width="330" background-color="black"/>
<region height="240" width="320" background-color="black" left="5"
top="5" id="videoregion"/>
<region height="80" width="320" background-color="#000000" left="5"
top="245" id="textregion"/>
</layout>
...

This will result in something like this:

While this gets all the captions on the screen, it looks much better if you widen the caption item width in conjunction with this:

<font size="3">

to some smaller number; e.g.

<font size="2">

width="320"

to some smaller number; e.g.

width="380"

...
<layout>
<root-layout height="295" width="330" background-color="black"/>
<region height="240" width="320" background-color="black" left="5"
top="5" id="videoregion"/>
<region height="40" width="320" background-color="#000000" left="5"
top="245" id="textregion"/>
</layout>
...

To add - say 60 pixels you'll need to increase each of the width= items by 60 (lines 9, 10, and 12). You probably also want to center the video within this wider player by changing left=“5” on line 9 to left=“35” (adding half of the increased width):

...
<layout>
<root-layout height="295" width="390" background-color="black"/>
<region height="240" width="380" background-color="black" left="35"
top="5" id="videoregion"/>
<region height="40" width="380" background-color="#000000" left="5"
top="245" id="textregion"/>
</layout>
...

...
<layout>
<root-layout height="295" width="330" background-color="black"/>
<region height="240" width="320" background-color="black" left="5"
top="5" id="videoregion"/>
<region height="40" width="320" background-color="#000000" left="5"
top="245" id="textregion"/>
</layout>
...

To add - say 40 pixels you'll need to increase the first and third height= items by 40 (lines 9 and 12). e.g.

...
<layout>
<root-layout height="335" width="330" background-color="black"/>
<region height="240" width="320" background-color="black" left="5"
top="5" id="videoregion"/>
<region height="80" width="320" background-color="#000000" left="5"
top="245" id="textregion"/>
</layout>
...