Captions

A track of bars

A subtitles track holds caption bars and nothing else: each bar is a start, an end and its text, in timeline seconds. That is all the app knows about a bar. Nothing links a bar to a track, a file or a word, so the bars can be generated, written by hand in timeline.json, or fixed one by one, and the app treats them the same.

Where the words come from

BetterEdits never transcribes anything. Next to a media file there may be a .analyzemedia file, written when the footage was analysed (by analyze on the command line, or any tool that writes the analyzemedia format). Among other things it holds every word spoken in the file with its timing. That is what Generate uses.

A file that has not been analysed plays, cuts and exports as usual; it just has no words to give, and the Generate button says so. Bars can always be written by hand, in the Bars tab or in timeline.json. See Workspace.

Generate subtitles

Choose Generate Subtitles in a video or audio track's panel or header menu, or press ⌥⌘T with the track active. A Subtitles track appears at the top with bars made from the words of the clips on that track, mapped to where those clips sit on the timeline and cut into short bars by the rules in Settings › Subtitles. A bar never crosses a cut, and a change of speaker ends a bar. The new track wears the default caption style and opens at once.

If a subtitles track already exists, the button asks whether to replace its bars or add a second track.

When none of the track's clips has been analysed, Generate is disabled and the panel says so; clips without one give no bars.

They do not follow the cut

The bars are yours from the moment they are made: move, trim, split, merge, edit, restyle, reposition, reorder the track. They do not move when you cut the picture afterwards, and nothing in the app watches the footage on their behalf. When the picture changes under them, generate again from the Track tab, or do captions last.

Generate again

The Generate section of the Track tab lists every track with words and a From button for each. It replaces every bar in the track, edits included, with fresh ones cut by the current rules in Settings › Subtitles, and asks first when the track has bars. It is also how new bar rules reach an existing track.

Bars and Track

Click the subtitles row to open it on the right. Two tabs under its name: Track holds the style, position, lock, visibility, Generate and arrange; Bars lists the bars. Clicking a bar in the timeline opens Bars. Esc drops the selected bar.

Edit the bars

The bars panel lists every bar. Edit the words in place. Click a bar's time to seek there. The ⋯ button and the right-click menu offer Merge with next, Split in half and Delete. Split cuts a bar at its middle word and shares the time out by the length of each half's text.

In the timeline, click a bar to select it and seek to it. Its right-click menu has Merge with Next, Split in Half, Duplicate Bar and Delete Bar. ⌘D duplicates the selected bar into the room before the next one. ⌫ deletes it.

Style

The Style section of the track panel shows a menu of caption styles, each rendered in its own look, and a preview of the current one. Pick a style there. Edit Styles… opens Settings › Subtitle Styles. See Settings.

Position

Choose Top, Middle or Bottom. For Bottom, the From bottom slider sets the distance up from the bottom edge, from 2% to 45%. 20% keeps captions clear of the Reels UI. Open the Guides menu in the viewer to see the safe areas while you decide.

Lock, hide, export

Lock the subtitles track to freeze the bars, style and position. Deleting a subtitles track with bars asks first; deleting a video track leaves its subtitles alone.

The eye hides a subtitles track from the preview and the export. Visible subtitles are burned into every export with the same renderer the viewer uses.