Captioning for Quicktime
Creating the Caption File

{QTtext}

This piece of code will tell Quicktime Pro that this is a Quicktime caption file containing text.

{font: Arial}

Though there are no real standards for web captioning, most people use a sans-serif font - usually Arial or Geneva. Avoid fancy, uncommon, or hard to read fonts for your captions. You can change the font for individual lines of captioning if you choose.

{justify: center}

The justification of the captions is up to you, but center justified captions are usually easier to read.

{size: 12}

This defines the font size in points for your captions. Be sure your fonts are big enough to read, but small enough to allow some extra space. Some computers display fonts larger (i.e., if you have large fonts turned on in Windows) and the captions may be cut off. Size 12 is usually sufficient. If you want to display them in a larger caption window, then you might use 13 or 14.

{backcolor:0, 0, 0}

This line of code tells Quicktime what color to display the background of the captions. The three numbers represent the amount of Red, Green, and Blue respectively to display. The values can be 0 - 65534. All three zeros correspond to no color or black. Most captions on the web use white text on a black background.

If you want to change the background color, just increase one or more of the numbers. 65534, 0, 0 means the highest amount of red, no green, and no blue, so you'd get a red background. 65534, 0, 65534 indicate the highest amount of red, no green, and the highest amount of blue - which is a combination or red and blue. Purple! You can play with these colors to get any color on the planet, but remember that you probably just want to stick with black.

If you change the background color, you may also want to change the color of the text. To do this, just add {textcolor:0, 0, 0} to the first line of the caption file (the numbers work the same as backcolor) and make sure there is plenty of contrast between the text and background colors.

{timescale: 30}

Timescale indicates how we are going to designate units of time for captions appearing on the screen. A value of 30 means that each second will be broken into 30 parts.

To fully understand timescale you must also understand the concept of timecode. Timecode is how time is represented in video. A typical timecode looks like this [00:01:42.15]. You'll notice several of these in the example code above. Think of timecode as a stopwatch that times the length of your movie. The first two numbers represent hours, the second two numbers are minutes, the third set of numbers are seconds, and the final two numbers are fractions of seconds. Notice that colons separate hours, minutes, and seconds, but a period separates seconds and fractions of seconds. So, the timecode [00:01:42.15] indicates that we are 1 minute, 42 seconds, and 15 SOMETHINGS of a second into the movie. This is where timescale comes into play. If the timescale is 100, then .15 designates 15/100th of a second. If timescale is 30, then the 15 indicate 15/30th or half of a second.

If you use MAGpie, use {timescale: 100} because it is easier to make adjustments and MAGpie displays time this way. If you are going to create the caption file manually, select timescale of 30, because Quicktime displays timecode in 30ths of a second.

{width: 320} and {height: 60}

Width and height that the caption area should display, in pixels. If you use MAGpie to create the caption file, you will probably need to edit width and height. This width value should usually be the same width as your video, unless the video is very small, in which case you might specify a larger width value.

[00:00:00.00] Dorothy: Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore

The zeros represent the first timecode in your movie. All caption files should start with the zero timecode, even if you don't want anything to display in the captions at the very beginning. Starting with zero allows the captions and audio/video to be synchronized. In this case, the text after the timecode will be displayed at the very beginning of the movie. It will be displayed in the font, justification, and size set in the first line.

[00:00:04.15] {justify:left}{italic}barking{plain} [00:00:07.04]

The second timecode in the caption file begins the display of a new caption. The Dorothy... text will display for the first 4 and 15/30th (or 4 1/2) seconds. The word barking will then be displayed. The curly brackets ({ and }) indicate special formatting for the captions. In this case, the word barking is preceded by {justify: left} and {italic}, so it will display at the left of the screen in italic font. The word barking will display until we are 7 and 4/30th seconds into the movie.

Hints about the Quicktime caption file and captioning in general

• The movie preferences can be listed in any order, but {QTtext} must be the first item in the text file.
• Timecodes should be placed on a line all by themselves. This makes editing much easier.
• Be careful not to mistakenly use a colon in place of the period before the fractions of a second.
• Text formatting codes like {justify:left} and {italic} will remain active until another text formatting code overrides or negates it. In the example above, {plain} would stop the text from displaying italicized. You would have to add {justify:center} before the next caption to get the captions to be centered again.
• If you specify more than one alignment per section of captions, then the last alignment specified will set the alignment for the entire caption. In other words, you can't have the first line of one caption centered, then the next line left aligned.
• You can add many different text-formatting codes in your file. Get a complete list at the Quicktime site - external link. There are lots of fun things you can do, such as changing sizes, locations, or colors, and you can even add links.
• Always make sure your caption file ends at the same time as your video. The caption file should end with a timecode that is equal to the length of the movie.
• Captions are often aligned to the left or right to indicate dialogue from someone that is not currently visible in the video.
• Italics usually indicate some nonverbal sounds, including special effects and background sounds. Narrations are also italicized. Only caption important audio content.
• Most television captioning usually does not display speaker's name (e.g., Dorothy:) if the speaker is visible in the movie because the viewer can look to see who is speaking while reading the captions. Off screen speakers are also rarely identified, unless it isn't obvious who is speaking. On the web, where video quality may be poor and the size of the video may make it difficult to identify who is speaking, you may want to specifically identify the speaker if it isn't obvious. Only identify the speaker's name when the speaker changes, and don't identify them repeatedly if there is a long section where they are the only one speaking.
• It is common on the web to display the speaker's name left aligned on one line, then the dialogue center aligned on the next line. Though this makes identifying speakers easy, it does waste most of the space available on the first line of caption space. A preferred method is to include the speaker name followed by a colon, and then begin the dialogue on the same line.
• Captions should typically be verbatim, word-for-word records of what is spoken. It is, however, common to remove unnecessary content, background dialogue, or filler words (like 'um') where appropriate or when caption timing will be affected.