Camtasia Studio Learning Center

Camtasia Studio 6 Tutorial:

Captioning

Learn how to add captioning to a video by pasting a prepared script and synching the text with the video playback.

Now you try: Download the sample project files to practice adding captioning.

Add Captioning

The Open Caption option synchronizes audio with onscreen caption text. Use captions to create videos accessible to a larger audience. With open captioning, you can create videos for:

• Viewers with hearing impairments.
• Viewers that cannot listen to audio in their current settings.
• International audiences—create subtitles and onscreen translations for non-native speakers.
  

Add Captions by Synchronizing Text and Audio

You can paste a prepared script into the text box and synchronize the captioning with the audio playback. Using a prepared script allows you to save the text for future use and to check for spelling and grammatical errors.

1. In the Task List, select Captions.
2. The Open Captions pane appears. Copy a script to the clipboard.
3. Click the Paste button to paste the script into the text box. After the first three lines of text in the text box, the text changes from black to red. The text turns to red to remind you that any text over three lines is not included in the current caption.
4. Click the Start button . The video plays back from the beginning of the Timeline. To set a new caption point, click on any words (black or red) within the text box.
   

Move your cursor over the first red word in the text box. When you hear that word during playback, click the word. Camtasia Studio sets a caption at that location. As a result, three lines of text in the text box change to black. The red text indicates where a new caption point should begin.

5. Continue to set caption points until all the text changes to black.

Captions display in the video until you enter a new caption. Insert a blank caption to not display any captioning for a portion of the video.

6. Click the Stop button .
7. Click Finished.
   

Captioning Display Options

Caption Width

Captions cannot exceed three lines of text. In the Width field, enter the number of characters per line. If you increase the number of characters per line, the text size decreases. The default setting is 32 characters per line. You may enter a value from 30 to 100.

Caption Display

• Overlay captioning on the video.
  
• Underlay: Inserts captioning underneath the video.
  
• Display: Display captioning in the video. For overlaid captions, you can toggle the captions on or off in the final video.