Editorial Captions for Essays, Travel and Documentary Cuts

Editorial is the serif caption style. The letters are white, bold and set in a serif face, with a soft shadow and no plate behind them. Nothing blocks the picture, which makes the style a good match for footage that carries a mood.

The look

• The font is New York, the label you see in the Font menu, in bold at 42 px.
• The text is white with a soft shadow.
• There is no plate, so the footage shows all the way up to the edge of the letters.
• The caption sits low in the frame.
• With Highlight spoken word on, the word being said turns yellow and gains an underline. You can change both in Options.

Where it works

• Travel and landscape footage with a narrator.
• Interviews where the answers are reflective and unhurried.
• Essay-style videos where the words matter as much as the pictures.
• Brand films and short documentaries with a calm pace.

The serif letters carry a bookish tone. A fast comedy cut or a screen tutorial usually suits a plainer style such as Clean or Typewriter.

Take care with bright footage. Without a plate, the shadow is the only thing separating the letters from the picture. Bright skies, snow and white walls make white text hard to read. If your footage has shots like that in the lower part of the frame, choose Clean, which has a translucent plate, or Block, which has a solid one.

Test it against your brightest shot

1. Open the Subtitles tab, then Styles, and select Editorial.
2. Pause the video. Move your pointer along the timeline. The preview shows the frame under the pointer, along with whatever caption is showing there.
3. Stop on the brightest frame that has a caption. Check that every letter can be read.
4. If a shot fails, drag the caption on the video to a darker part of the frame, or lower Size in Options. Another option is to switch styles.

Read the words once

A serif face invites close reading, and viewers will see every capital letter and every comma. Open the Content tab and read the transcript from the top. Fix names, capitals and punctuation by clicking into the text and typing. The caption on the video updates when you click away.

A single typo in a caption stays on screen for as long as the caption does, so this pass is quick and worth it.

Make it quieter

Editorial has a larger presence than a small sans-serif line. If you want the picture to lead, open Options and bring Size down a few steps. The slider runs from 24 to 120 px, and you can click the number beside it to type an exact value.

Click Reset to style at any point to return to the style's own font and size.

Compare it with another style

Open a travel clip or an interview in DepCut, generate captions, and switch between Editorial and Clean on the same sentence. The difference shows in a few seconds.