Best Practices for the Caption Editor

How To Speed Up Your Process Adding Captions

When we created Zubtitle, we set out to build the first automated, on-demand tool to add captions to videos. We also wanted it to be dependable and easy-to-use to make your video creation as simple as possible. And that’s why we want to give you some best practices to make adding captions to your videos even easier.

We know that by the time you get to the captioning step in the video editing process, you’re usually ready to be done working on your project and put it out into the world. So we’re here to get you through that caption part as quickly as possible! With these easy steps, you can get your captions completed more efficiently than ever.

Step 1: Style your captions

After you’ve uploaded your video to Zubtitle, one of the options you'll see on the right-hand menu is Text Styles. It may be tempting to save this seemingly cosmetic choice for the end after you’ve edited your captions, but resist! Sometimes the caption style can actually change the way the lines measure out. So if you go back at the end and change your caption style after breaking up all of your lines exactly the way that you want… you may have a few additional tweaks to make.  Of course, it’s super easy if you have to do so, but to make sure you get through the process as fast as possible, we recommend you style your captions first.

Step 2: Check for spelling and punctuation errors

You may be tempted to want to watch your video all the way through at this point to see the captions in all their glory, but we recommend waiting until the end. If your video is 1-minute, or even longer, this extra watch time adds up, so just wait on this for now since you’re going to want to watch everything before you download it anyway.

Instead, do yourself a favor and just read through the transcript for spelling and punctuation errors. Our speech-to-text technology is highly intuitive, but there’s always the chance for mistakes. Starting out with a quick read-through is always good because it gives you a chance to catch any obvious errors or misspellings before you’re distracted by other edits.

Step 3: Change or add caption breaks

Now it’s time to go through the transcript again. But this time, pay attention to where the caption breaks have been timed by Zubtitle. If the transcription timing isn’t exactly the way you want it, you can change it down to the millisecond when you click on a caption break. Zubtitle also automatically determines how many lines of text will be shown on each slide. If you want more or less text to show on a specific caption slide, just adjust the caption breaks accordingly. And we’ve made it super simple to do just that. There’s no need to mess with any of your text. All you have to do is either click and drag the existing caption break icons to its new spot or click the “+” icon to add new breaks entirely. You can delete any unwanted caption breaks by clicking the caption break icon and selecting the trash can.

Step 4: Watch your video

Once you’ve gone through and edited the breaks in the transcript, it’s finally time to watch your video! Pay attention to the captions as you watch your video all the way through, keeping an eye out for any spelling or grammar errors that you previously missed. As you make your way through the video, if you see any caption breaks that aren’t timed the way you want them, just pause the video and make the necessary corrections.

Pro tip: If you want to make a correction on a different spot in the video, there’s no need to carefully drag the video progress bar to the exact point you’re trying to edit. All you have to do is click within the text itself, and the video preview will pick up at that caption break!

Step 5: You’re done!

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