Captioning with QuickTime Pro

The simplest method of captioning for QuickTime Pro is to associate a .qt.xml caption file with your media file. There's also the possibility of embedding the .qt.xml file in your media file. This tutorial applies to both Windows and Mac computers.

Making your Captioning Request:

New Requests:

• Ensure the .qt.xml output is selected under Advanced Settings -> Output Types. If it isn't yet, select it.

• Under the Caption Appearance tab, you can select the font size.  The Custom option is in points. We usually suggest 48 for 1080p videos, and 32 for 720p.

• Under the Web tab, enter the size of your video, in pixels, next to Video Pane Size (width x height). Next to Text Pane Size (width x height), enter the width of the video and the height you wish for the caption pane. A height of 60 or 80 pixels is usually appropriate for most cases.

• When you have all the changes done, click Apply Changes.

• Make your Captioning request, using your video.

• Once results are available, download the .qt.xml file from the Results Email or the Submission Details Page.

Completed Submissions:

• If you didn't originally select the .qt.xml output, or if you need to set the appropriate values for Font Size, Video Pane Size or Text Pane Size, you can use our free Redo feature to request the additional output or make appearance changes.

• Go the Submission Details page of the request you want to Redo, and click Click here to Redo. On the next page, open the Advanced Settings. Make the appearance changes you require as described above. When you're done, click Apply Changes to Redo.

• On the Redo page, click Submit Redo.

• Once results are available, download the .qt.xml file from the Results Email or the Submission Details Page.

Displaying captions on the QuickTime player:

Once you get the caption file back, you can associate the result with your file. You can download and install QuickTime Pro from here. Remember you'll need to register your program -- the Pro version is not free and needs a Registration Code. Open QuickTime and click on the File menu. Click Open File and choose your .qt.xml file:

Click on the Play button, to check if the captions are being properly displayed: 

On the Edit menu, click on Select All. And then Copy:

Now go back to your QuickTime program, open the File menu, click Open File, choose your media file and open it. On the Edit menu, click on Add to Movie:

Captions will be displayed as you watch the media file:

If the placement doesn't suit your needs, then you can change it by opening the Window menu, and clicking Show Movie Properties:

On the Properties dialog box, click on Video Track, and then on its Visual Settings tab. Note the size of your media file, on the Normal Size field. In this example, it's 1280 x 720. Now, click on Text Track, and then on its Visual Settings tab. If you want to have captions being displayed at the bottom of your media file, change the value in the second box, on the Offset field, to match the height of your media file. In this case, it's 720.

You can close the dialog box. You should now see captions being displayed at the bottom of the window:

Embedding captions using QuickTime:

Now that you are watching captions being displayed at the same time as your media file, you might want to have them embedded -- this way you won't need to go through the process of adding captions every time you want to watch your captioned video. So, complete the first part of this tutorial. Once you have captions being displayed in the place you want to, all you need to do is open the File menu, click on Save As..., choose Save as a self-contained movie, name your new file, and click Save. You'll get a .mov file with embedded captions in it. If you prefer to open caption, read these instructions instead.

Next time you open this media file, captions will be automatically displayed:

 

Additional Notes:

• If you are experiencing problems making the results work on this program, check out these troubleshooting tips.