Like most things with openshot you can get about 90% way there. Once you get to that point you can spend forever trying to tune what you want. Very powerful application.
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!
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.
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).
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.🙂
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.
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.
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!
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.
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: th-cam.com/channels/yNUiehgSh7Sq8jSEpFhc0w.html 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.
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 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...
@@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)
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?
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: th-cam.com/video/39mP3JMjNao/w-d-xo.html
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?
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.
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.
Well done, a year later and your efforts are still helping us. Thank you.
Like most things with openshot you can get about 90% way there. Once you get to that point you can spend forever trying to tune what you want. Very powerful application.
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!
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!
Thanks for letting me know that it helped you.
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.
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).
Thank you! Nobody addresses this anywhere, and I was stuck. Your comment solved my headaches!
I did not have that issue. Start and end times were relative to the clip.
This is what has been tripping me up. Thanks a lot.
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.🙂
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.
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.
Thank you for this clear tutorial. I just downloaded v.3.1.1 (Sep 2023) and it all works well on it.
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.
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!
This is so so so helpful! Precise and straight to the point. Thank you so much!
Great tutorial, clear and simple. Thank you very much for your help.
Amazingly useful video on how to do this thank you,
super, vielen Dank, thanks a lot
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.
Thanks for sharing this!
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.
Excellent! Thank you very much.
coz of this video i was made to subscribe thank you
I found this very useful, thank you.
straight to the point great video, Thanks :)
thank you very much I really find useful your video!
Thanks a bunch.
Sir please make one more time with full details again and increase clarity of voice
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: th-cam.com/channels/yNUiehgSh7Sq8jSEpFhc0w.html
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.
@@yosefk2864 thank you very much sir
Thank you man very good explanation
Thank you for making this helpful video.😀
thank you
Thank you very much!
You are the best!
Noice thanks
thanks for the tutorial :D
awesome thanks!
thank you sir
Thanks for the tutorial! Very helpful!
My pleasure. Thanks for your feedback.
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!
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.
@@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...
@@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)
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?
Thank you!
I subscribed!
Soooooo..... helpful!!! Thank you
Thank you. Very useful.
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: th-cam.com/video/39mP3JMjNao/w-d-xo.html
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?
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...
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.
Use Subtitle Edit
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
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.