Captions workflow in Final Cut Pro for Mac

You can add captions to your projects to create subtitles, closed captions, and burned-in captions. Special caption roles make it easy to deliver captions in multiple languages. The basic workflow is outlined below.

The viewer showing a video image with a superimposed caption

Step 1: Choose a caption format

In Final Cut Pro, choose whether to create CEA-608, iTT, or SRT captions. The format you choose depends on the intended use of your project and the target audience. Broadcasters, streaming services, and government regulators each have their own delivery specifications.

Step 2: Create a caption role

Create a caption role for the chosen format and a subrole for each language version.

Step 3: Create or import captions

Create or import an initial set of captions in one language.

Step 4: Edit caption text

Edit caption text directly in the timeline using the caption editor, or make text changes in the inspector.

Step 5: Adjust and arrange captions

Use the powerful editing tools in Final Cut Pro to adjust the timing and arrangement of captions in your projects. You can sync the captions to specific clips and points in time in your project, and set the duration of each caption.

Step 6: Format caption text

To determine how your captions look onscreen, you can format caption text in the inspector. The CEA-608 and iTT caption standards each have their own specifications for text formats, placement, color, transitions, number of lines, and number of characters. The SRT format has relatively few formal specifications. You can format SRT captions in Final Cut Pro, but you have the option to remove all formatting during export to make them universally compatible with players and devices.

Step 7: Create captions in additional languages

After you finalize an initial set of captions in one language, you can create captions in additional languages by duplicating the first set of captions. You can enter translations in the caption editor or the inspector.

You can also send the captions out for translation and then import the translated captions.

At this stage, you can also Convert captions to another format in Final Cut Pro for Mac.

Step 8: Export captions

You can export captions with your final output media file, either as a separate file or embedded directly in the video file.

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Final Cut Pro User Guide for Mac