Captions show the words of your video on screen. Airtime Recorder gives you two kinds: captions viewers can turn on and off while they watch, and burned-in captions that you style yourself and that are part of the picture.
Captions your viewers can turn on and off
Every video with speech has captions on its watch page. Viewers control them with the CC button in the player controls:
- Turn off captions hides them. Turn on captions shows them again. The player remembers the choice in that browser.
- While the Transcript panel is open, the words show in the transcript instead, and the button says Captions are shown in the transcript.
- If the button says No captions available, the video usually has no speech to caption.
Burn captions into your video
Burned-in captions are drawn into the video itself. They show on the watch page and in every download, and viewers can't turn them off. Use them when you want captions everywhere your video goes, in a style that matches it.
- Open the video editor: Open your video and click Edit video.
- Open Captions: Click Captions on the right-hand side of the editor.
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Turn captions on: Turn on the switch next to Captions. Your video gets captions in the Clean style.
- Pick a style: Under Style, click Clean, Boxed, Karaoke, Pill, Punch or Reveal. Each tile shows how its words move.
- Choose where they sit: Under Position, choose Top, Middle or Bottom.
- Save your changes: Click Save changes in the top right corner.
Once you've burned in captions, the CC button no longer shows on your watch page, because the captions are already in the picture.
Fine-tune the look
Click the caption in the video preview to select it. A toolbar opens above it:
- Display — show one Word at a time, a short Phrase, or a whole Line.
- Size — S, M, L or XL.
- Style — the font, the Text color, the Highlight color for the word being spoken (in styles that highlight words), and the Background (None, Outline or Box).
To move the caption, drag it in the preview. Drag its side handles to make it wider or narrower. Press Esc to deselect it. After you change a style's look, a Reset button (for example Reset Clean) brings back the original look.
Captions in your downloads
- When captions are burned in, the downloaded video shows them exactly as they look on the watch page.
- When your video has speech, the downloaded file also carries a separate subtitle track. Video players that support subtitles can show or hide it.
- To get the words as a file instead, see Download the transcript of your Airtime Recorder video. It offers SubRip (.srt) and WebVTT (.vtt) subtitle files.
💡 Tip: To fix a misheard word in your captions, correct it in the transcript. See Edit your Airtime Recorder video by editing its transcript.
Why can't I turn on captions?
- No speech to caption — the video has no speech, so there are no words to burn in.
- Burned-in captions are not available for this language yet — the video's language isn't supported for burned-in captions yet. Viewers can still turn on captions on the watch page.
- If a style is greyed out with the note that it can't draw some characters in this video, pick one of the styles that still work.
If your download stops with These captions can't be exported, follow the message: pick another style or turn captions off, or try again in a minute while the captions finish preparing.
Still need help? Submit a support ticket or email us at help@airtime.com.