How to add subtitles to your video using the caption effect in Openshot 2.6.1.

Рет қаралды 20,709

2 жыл бұрын

It's very easy and fast to add subtitles to your videos using the captions effect.
Once you know how to use it.
I hardly found any helpful information on the web. So this is what I figured out so far.
1 drag a video or image to your timeline
make sure the playhead (this is the red playback line) is positioned at the beginning of the timeline
Make sure you have the properties view open
If not add it by right clicking the clip and clicking properties or using the view and docks menu
2 open the effects window
3 drag the caption effect on top of your video or image
4 click the little c
5 this will open the caption editor at the right
6 change the next properties before doing anything else:
Color: chose a color with good visibility for your video e.g yellow
Font alpha: set to 255, this will make your captions totally opaque.
(Alpha values range from 0 through 255, where 0 represents a fully transparent color, and 255) represents a fully opaque color
Font size: set to 40
Left size: set to 0.10 (this is the location from the left where the text will start from)
Top size: set to 0.90 (this is the location from the top where the text will start from)
7 in the captions pane change the start time and end time for your first subtitle
8 on the next line write your text
9 press ENTER
10 Press ENTER a second time because there has to be an empty line in between captions. Press the plus sign and change the start and end time of the next subtitle. Or type in yourself start and end times, but make sure to use the exact format, meaning: two digits for hours, two digits for minutes, two digits for seconds and three digits for milliseconds (if you don't add three digits for milliseconds it won't work!). The arrow in between consists of one space, two dashes and the greater than symbol and another space.
You can also do this by copying and pasting and changing the values. And changing the text for the subtitle
11 make sure to click ENTER at the end of the line otherwise the caption won't be added and add an empty line between subtitles!
You can do all of this while watching your video in the preview pane, looking at the time indicator, pausing the video, type start and stop time in the caption editor, type in your text or copy and paste it from e.g. a Word doc, press ENTER, and finish subtitling your video in no time!
Some practical tips for subtitles:
Font size should be about 30-40 for good readability
The length per line should not exceed about 40 characters
If you prepare your text in Microsoft Word, using the Arial font size 18 you will get you some 40 characters to a line, this is very useful and time saving to know. You can also adjust the width of the caption pane to some 40 characters.
Don't show any titles at the same time that a subtitle is shown
Allow 1-2 seconds between subtitles

Пікірлер: 59

@max2us 6 ай бұрын

Well done, a year later and your efforts are still helping us. Thank you.

@phananhmoonbow Ай бұрын

This is so so so helpful! Precise and straight to the point. Thank you so much!

@timolubitz2842 Жыл бұрын

Thanks so much, this was really helpful and exactly what I needed. It saved me a lot of time of googling and try/erroring. Good job, Yosef!

@adoheron Жыл бұрын

Yosef, just found this video. I for the life of me could not get captions to work. I thought the numbers in the initial caption editor were just not important. LOL. Now I know how important they are.

@raffimesdjian173 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much for putting this together. A much needed tutorial for this somewhat new effect in OpenShot. I also appreciate that you included the version of OpenShot (v2.6.1) as often that is lacking and adds confusion when running other versions that may not include this feature/function. Cheers!

@yosefk2864 2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for letting me know that it helped you.

@abtar4294 Жыл бұрын

We can use ( + button which is green in colour) in caption editor to add time stamp based on playback marker location. So if I want to add text as 'Have a beautiful day.' I will drag playback marker to position in video from where I want to add that text and then click the ( + green button) after that I will drag playback marker to next position then first I will click (00:00:02:000 --> here) and then click (+ green button) and then add text . It will look like this 00:00:02:000 --> 00:00:05:000 'Have a beautiful day.' add other text by dragging playback marker twice and recording their position based on time by '+' green button.🙂

@R2MintOptions 10 ай бұрын

While playing around I clicked on the "+" sign and it auto time stamp, so good tip for those technically un-inclined. Sony Movie Studio was the best/easiest/most flexible for adding subtitles, but I've been looking for a free version; Flowblade's and Kdenlive's titling is primitive, so Caption Effect is the next best (free) thing.

@lissettericomorfin4110 Жыл бұрын

Great tutorial, clear and simple. Thank you very much for your help.

@davidjdailey 4 ай бұрын

Pressing the plus sign at the top of the captions window helps a lot. Press twice, and it adds the things in the correct format.

@yosefk2864 4 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing this!

@tonygriffin_ 9 ай бұрын

Thank you for this clear tutorial. I just downloaded v.3.1.1 (Sep 2023) and it all works well on it.

@ilonaslusarczyk9380 10 ай бұрын

Yosef, you saved my life. Than you! So clear , informative and helpful. I wonder how you add transitions to subtiles in open shot and if you can.

@Machiuka Жыл бұрын

Very useful video. What I've noticed is that the timing is relative of the current clip. If the subtitles are added on the second clip of the video, for example, at the start time of the subtitles must be added the start time of this clip. Thank you for sharing!

@BarrelBais Жыл бұрын

straight to the point great video, Thanks :)

@tabletdoodlewithtomtdt6679 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you man very good explanation

@swizzthesecond Жыл бұрын

Thank you for making this helpful video.😀

@jostle 2 жыл бұрын

It seems that the start and end times for the Caption are relative to the original Clip, not the Track in the timeline. For example, I have a video of my choir singing a song and there is a couple of minutes at the start before we actually start singing. If I trim 2 minutes from the start of the Track then, to show the Caption for 10 seconds at the start, I need to set the times of the Caption to 00:02:00:000 --> 00:02:10:000 You need to look at the "Start" property of the track and convert that from seconds to hh:mm:ss:nnn. Another example; I have a song cut from the middle of a longer performance. The "Start" of the Track is "207.37" (seconds) so I set the times of the Caption to 00:03:27:370 --> 00:03:37:370. Hope that helps.

@gimmiemynameback 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you! for the life of me I couldn't work out why the captions didn't show up when I changed the times. What's frustrating is when one clicks the + 'Insert Timestamp' button it uses the time from the edited video timeline, not from the original clip (so it is incorrect).

@Wiikend Жыл бұрын

Thank you! Nobody addresses this anywhere, and I was stuck. Your comment solved my headaches!

@adoheron Жыл бұрын

I did not have that issue. Start and end times were relative to the clip.

@SiveenO 2 ай бұрын

This is what has been tripping me up. Thanks a lot.

@chunkymonkey55555 7 ай бұрын

Amazingly useful video on how to do this thank you,

@MichaelBurhans Жыл бұрын

I found this very useful, thank you.

@mikesmovingimages Жыл бұрын

Excellent! Thank you very much.

@gianpaolohank Жыл бұрын

thank you very much I really find useful your video!

@DeutschlernenmitMaike 3 ай бұрын

super, vielen Dank, thanks a lot

@theworldsperson5705 Жыл бұрын

thanks for the tutorial :D

@itiller69 Жыл бұрын

coz of this video i was made to subscribe thank you

@greysky1786 Жыл бұрын

Thank you very much!

@bluelakeinspirations3668 2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the tutorial! Very helpful!

@yosefk2864 2 жыл бұрын

My pleasure. Thanks for your feedback.

@Epistemancer-bh2kb Жыл бұрын

Thanks a bunch.

@corollagl82 Жыл бұрын

You are the best!

@icybland Жыл бұрын

thank you sir

@bewonder4496 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

@betawithbrett7068 2 жыл бұрын

Soooooo..... helpful!!! Thank you

@andrewh35 Жыл бұрын

awesome thanks!

@mukuace 2 жыл бұрын

thank you

@gilbertbaker4647 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you very much. I used your info to set up captions. Before I saw your video, I was going to a Fiverr to do it because I was in a rush and I thought it was hard. However, the vertical line spacing is good in the preview but much taller in the output file. Do you know how to fix this?

@gimmiemynameback 2 жыл бұрын

I found Font Alpha works differently: Alpha values range from 0 through 1, where 0 represents a fully transparent color, and 1 represents fully opaque. Same for background. I am using Openshot 2.6.1.

@annadreamsart9756 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you. Very useful.

@yosefk2864 2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for your positive feedback. I'm a great fan of OpenShot and do all my video editing with it. The Caption Effect to subtitle is unfortunately a rather time consuming procedure. Surely this depends on how long your video is and how many subtitles you want to add. I myself, have started using the beta version of Subtitle Edit (free) because it's an enormous time saver doing most of the work automatically. It converts speech to text, though still needing manual corrections, and puts the subtitles automaticaly at the right times. Here's a link to my tutorial: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aZ-dg5Z7stCykaM.html

@ExxotikJimbo Жыл бұрын

I subscribed!

@gusgus1816 5 ай бұрын

Noice thanks

@nathaliec1492 Жыл бұрын

Thank you very much, that is extremely useful!! A question though: For some of the clips I added in the video, the captions are directly written vertically on the left side of the clip. Is there a way to fix this so that the captions go horizontally at the bottom of the clip? Thank you again very much!

@yosefk2864 Жыл бұрын

If I understand you right these aren't captions that you added, but were burned in to the clip, if so there is no way to change them.

@nathaliec1492 Жыл бұрын

@@yosefk2864 Thank you for your prompt reply!! I followed your tutorial to add captions/subtitles. But on some of the slides/clips/frames, OpenShot added the captions vertically, on the left. And not horizontally at the bottom of the slides/clips/frames. Not sure why...

@chigtychek 7 ай бұрын

@@nathaliec1492 I had it put them upside down on the top of the clip. Really odd. There seems to be an issue where the captions can be relocated and flipped etc and there is no properties to change this (flip)

@gimmiemynameback 2 жыл бұрын

Well I just spent 6 hours captioning a 20 minute video. Very tedious. I have an issue whereby the subtitles on the exported video file are much bigger than they appear on the preview window in Openshot. It looked the same at size 30 on the preview as size 15 on the exported (ie it is twice as big when exported). Anyone know why this is?

@corchua Жыл бұрын

I have the same problem! How did you fiexed it? Also the space between lines is much bigger, so the second line is not visible...

@motoryzen Ай бұрын

Is there no way to simply just add a .srt subtitles file and then just delay or hasten when it begins showing each caption/text by whatever milliseconds or seconds? I'm not trying to spend literally all day trying to manually type in ...and edit timewise each and every text caption that shows on screen with each subtitle file of a 2 hour long movie.

@yosefk2864 Ай бұрын

Use Subtitle Edit

@mukuace 2 жыл бұрын

I have a question, whenever I put a subtitle e.g from 00:00:05:000-00:00:10:000 the text never disappear s

@yosefk2864 2 жыл бұрын

The first default times in the caption editor are from 00:00:00:000 --> 00:10:00:000. If you change the start value to 00:00:05:000 which is seconds, make sure to change the end time also to seconds (00:00:10:000) because the default end time is in minutes. Which might be rather confusing.

@kasturimohapatra2825 Жыл бұрын

Sir please make one more time with full details again and increase clarity of voice

@yosefk2864 Жыл бұрын

OpenShot, in my opinion is the best, free and easiest to use video editor that includes all features one needs to edit videos. The subtitling feature works pretty well but lacks a lot and is not really intuative. Myself I use OpenShot for all my video editing, but for subtitling I use Subtitle Edit, a free program that does subtitling at the speed of light. I suggest you try it out. I have some nice tutorials on it: kzfaq.info/love/yNUiehgSh7Sq8jSEpFhc0w The latest version is 3.6.10. which includes all features in above mentioned tutorial. Finish editing your video with OpenShot and add subtitles with Subtitle Edit.

@kasturimohapatra2825 Жыл бұрын

@@yosefk2864 thank you very much sir