Caption Appearance Settings

Closed Captioning your files with CaptionSync allows you to select a variety of appearance settings for your results. This article shows you how to set the styling and layout preferences for your captions.

Some caption file formats have the ability to store information related to caption appearance such as line length, font, font size, etc. However, many formats do not store such information; in such cases, the media player will control the caption appearance. Additionally, some media players will override the settings stored in the caption file -- in this case, you should check with the player's vendor, or its instructions guide, to see how to change the caption appearance. 

How to set the Caption Appearance:

1. If making a new submission, just click the Advanced Settings, on the New Captioning Submission page; if making a Redo, go to Status of Submissions, and click the AST ID link for the request you want to Redo. Choose Click here to Redo and click the Advanced Settings.

2. Under the Caption Appearance tab, you can modify several parameters:

A few notes on this:

• For Broadcast outputs the Line Length is locked to 32, and the Lines per Caption are locked to 2. Otherwise, you can select different values.
• You can set a non-specific color for the caption background, by selecting Not Specified, on the Text Background Color menu. This means that, where possible, the caption file will not specify a background color. 
• Ensure you choose different values for the Text Background Color and the Text Font Color parameters. If for example, you choose yellow for both, captions will be "invisible"...
• The Font Size has 3 generic values available (Small, Medium, and Large), but you can also set your own size if you choose Custom. This allows you to enter a numeric point size, like 48 for a really large video, for example. Note that different players will render the font sizes very differently.
• The default position for vertical placement is at the bottom; so if your video has onscreen text, use the free Caption Editor tool to place specific captions at the top, via the V-Align parameter.

3. If you will be using the QuickTime or Real media players for caption playback, or an Open Captioned output, you can set additional parameters for the video and caption panes, under the Web tab:

4. Click the Apply Changes button; or Apply Changes to Redo button, if making a Redo. When you have all the options set up, make your request; or click the Submit Redo button, if making a Redo.

If you're using the Redo feature, and need to make other changes, you should follow the instructions available at our complete tutorial on the Redo feature.

Additional Notes:

• Character and word spacing issues in the captions, when using video editing software, can sometimes be solved by selecting a different font, one that is installed on the machine where the program is running.