X

464Final Cut Pro User Guide
Add, adjust, and share captions
Intro to captions in Final Cut Pro
Captions is a general term for timed text—visible lines of text that are synced with video
and audio media. Captions are most often used for subtitles (translations of the dialogue in
foreign-language movies and TV shows) or closed captions (transcriptions of a program’s
audio for people who are deaf or hard of hearing or for display on muted devices). Captions
are also used for karaoke, scrolling news items, and teleprompters.
Government regulators, broadcasters, and streaming services often have specific
requirements for subtitles and closed captions. With Final Cut Pro, you can add captions
to your projects and embed them in output files—for example, when you export files for
broadcast, burn DVDs, or publish your project to video-sharing websites. You can also
import and export captions as separate files, independent of the associated projects
and media.
How captions differ from titles
Captions have particular traits that distinguish them from titles:
• Captions are always visibly superimposed over everything else in the video frame,
including titles.
• Typically, viewers can turn captions on or off while watching TV shows, movies, web
videos, and other programs. In contrast, titles are always permanently “burned in to”
the output media file. (However, Final Cut Pro does offer the option to burn in captions
permanently.)
• Captions have industry file and formatting standards that make file transfers and
interchange possible.
• In Final Cut Pro, captions are assigned format-specific caption roles, with subroles for
different language versions. Titles are assigned the Titles role.