Move captions, and get captions into your editing app
Put captions at the bottom, center or top, keep them off faces, and learn which export carries them to Premiere, Final Cut or Resolve.
This page covers two questions about captions: where they sit on the screen, and how to get them into Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve. To add captions first, see Add captions and subtitles.
Move captions
Open the style menu on the Captions lane of the timeline. Under Position, select Bottom, Center or Top. Or ask Eddie: "put the captions at the top".
Captions stay off faces. Eddie checks where the speaker is in each shot. If a caption would cover a face, it moves to a clear band: the lower third, then the upper third, then the center. It stays in that band for the whole shot. To keep every caption exactly where you put it, ask Eddie to "stop moving captions off faces".
Captions stay off lower thirds. A caption that would cover a lower-third title moves up above it.
The same menu sets the Size (or ask "bigger captions"), the font, the colors and the casing.
Captions in your editing app
Each export carries captions differently:
| Export | Captions |
|---|---|
| Final Cut Pro (FCPXML) | Each caption card as its own title you can edit, in your caption font, size, color and position |
Resolve timeline (.fcpxml) | The same: one title per caption card |
Resolve 21 project (.drp) | A subtitle track inside the project, in your caption font, size, position and colors |
Premiere project (.prproj) | A caption track inside the project, in your caption font, size, position and colors |
| Premiere XML, OTIO | No captions. Use the SRT or VTT download |
| MP4 | Burned into the picture, with the word highlight |
Premiere and Resolve projects with captions. Open the project: the captions are already on a caption track (Premiere) or a subtitle track (Resolve), one caption per card. If your editing app says a font is missing, install it, or pick another font for the track: in Premiere in the Essential Graphics panel, in Resolve in the subtitle track's Inspector.
Final Cut Pro captions as titles. Each caption card becomes one title on its own, connected to the clip under it. A card that crosses a cut is split in two. To get one title per word or two, ask Eddie for fewer words per caption (for example "two words per caption") before you export. Some edits, for example ones with crops or speed ramps, get Final Cut's own caption lane instead, and the export notes say so.
What carries over. SRT files keep the words and the timing only. The titles in an FCPXML and the caption and subtitle tracks in a .prproj or .drp also keep your caption font, size, color (each speaker's own color too) and position. Install the font on your computer if your editing app does not have it. No editing app gets the word-by-word highlight, the background band or the entrance animation. Set those in your editing app.
Any other editing app. Download Captions (.srt) or Captions (.vtt) from Export ▸ All export options… ▸ Video file, and import it next to your timeline. Both are free.
Good to know
- Export again after you change captions. A file you already downloaded does not change.
- Captions skip filler words such as "um" by default. The audio keeps them.
- Captions are never translated. To speak the edit in another language, see Dub your edit into another language.