Subtitles

The Subtitles editor is where you turn speech into timed subtitles. It pairs a transcript text field with the timeline, so you can match each spoken passage to its exact moment — manually, or with Transcription.

Captioning manually

First add your recording to the audio track. The manual workflow is a loop of three actions:

1. Listen to the passage you want to caption.
2. Move the playhead to the end of that passage.
3. Type the words into the transcript field, then press Enter to save the segment.

Each subtitle starts where the previous one ended and ends at the current playhead, so your captions stay seamless with no gaps.

Writing text and references

Write exactly what the speaker says. Each project has one speaker. Ordinary speech, Quran references and quotations can appear in the same segment and use different styles.

• Quran reference - use {{2:255}} for a verse or {{2:255:2-4}} for a word range.
• Quotation - use {{quoted text}} for a quotation.
• Use the insertion controls to select a passage or insert a quotation without typing the markers.

Keyboard shortcuts

Video preview

• → — move forward 2 seconds.
• ← — move backward 2 seconds.
• Space — play / pause.
• PgUp / PgDn — toggle speed between 1× and 2×.
• F11 — toggle fullscreen.
• I — go to the start.

Subtitles editor

• Enter - save the transcript segment.
• Backspace — remove the last subtitle.
• E — edit the subtitle at the playhead; hold it to open word-by-word timing editing.
• S — add silence.
• M / N — set the subtitle end / start time.
• T — add a custom text clip.
• D — split the subtitle at the cursor.
• Delete — delete the clip under the cursor.

These are the default shortcuts; change them in Settings → Shortcuts. Click outside text and number fields before using an editing shortcut. Here, “at the cursor” means at the timeline playhead, not under the mouse pointer.

Word-by-word (WBW) timestamps

Word-by-word timestamps store the exact timing of each word. They enable word-by-word editing and precise splitting, and they are required by the word-by-word visual effects in the Style editor.

You can add them in two ways:

• Automatically - Groq and ElevenLabs return word timestamps during Transcription.
• Edit or recalculate — place the playhead inside a subtitle and hold E to edit its word timings. Review the timing against the recording.

Splitting & cleaning up

The Subtitles editor includes tools to keep your captions tidy:

• Split long subtitles — use existing word timings to split subtitles that exceed a word or duration limit, optionally only at stop signs.
• AI split — let your AI provider choose natural subtitle boundaries.
• Mark subtitles based on length — highlight subtitles within a chosen minimum and maximum word count.
• Mark missing WBW — flag subtitles without word-by-word timestamps.

Review

After captioning (or AI segmentation), use Segments to review to jump between flagged subtitles — low-confidence, coverage issues, long segments, or missing word timings — and verify each one.

Display options

• Caption progress — track how much of the recording is captioned.
• Playback speed — slow down or speed up while captioning.

What’s next?

With subtitles in place, add translations in the Translations tab.