Drag Your Captions Into Place and Reset Them Later

Captions start low in the frame. When that spot covers a face, a title or part of a screen recording, you can drag them somewhere else on the video itself. One reset button brings them back.

Drag the caption

1. Move the playhead to a point where a caption is on screen.
2. Press on the caption in the preview and drag it.
3. Let go where you want it. Every caption in that track now sits there.

The position belongs to the caption track as a whole. Moving one line moves every line in the track, so you set the placement once for the full video. If a project carries a second language, each language track keeps its own position, and by default the tracks stack upward so two lines never sit on top of each other.

Snap guides

While you drag, the caption snaps to useful lines and paints a guide when it lands on one:

• The edges of the frame.
• A margin inset 5 percent from each edge.
• The center line.
• The edges and centers of other items on screen at the same moment, such as a title.

Snapping is how you line a caption up with a title, so the two share a left edge or a center. It also gives you a quick way to center a caption in the frame.

Hold Cmd on a Mac, or Ctrl on Windows, to drag with no snapping. The caption's center cannot leave the frame, so a wide caption can still hang over an edge. Its center stays between 2 and 98 percent of the way across and down.

Three things to know

• Dragging selects the line you grabbed. If you press Backspace or Delete next, that line is deleted. Undo brings it back.
• Double-click the caption on the video to edit its words in place. Press Esc or click away to finish.
• Picking another style in Styles keeps the position you chose. The style changes the look and leaves the spot alone.

Reset the position

1. Open the Subtitles tab, then Options.
2. Find the Position row. The Reset button is dimmed until you have moved a caption.
3. Press Reset.

Every caption track returns to its style's own spot. The note under the button says "Drag the caption on the video to reposition every subtitle", which sums up how the control works.

When to move captions

• A face sits low in the frame. Drag the captions above it.
• A lower-third title sits near the bottom. Move the captions up above it, or move the title.
• A screen recording has a toolbar along the bottom. Slide the captions to the top of the frame.
• A product shot fills the lower half. Place the captions where nothing important sits.

Pick one position for the whole video. Because the position applies to every caption, test the new spot on your busiest shot and on a close-up of a face, then play the video through once.

Adjust and move on

Open a project with captions in DepCut, drag them to a spot you like, and leave the guides to do the aligning. You can press Reset at any point to start over.