Welcome to a new tutorial on how to create subtitles on a quicktime movie.
Now you probably thinking why you want to do that. Well, I received last week the task to create a video synchronized with some sub’s, actually it would be the same like you see on a DVD. but… the movie should be resizable and the text changed without spending to much time on it.
That just striked my idea of going into Premiere or After Effects and create the subtitles there, so I’ve started to surf around the web searching for any way of doing this job. Various ways were described, using qt text, using smil and so on. But there was simply no tutorial around which would explain me how to do it.
You probably have enough of me now, and want to get your hands dirty on this, so let’s start:
Requirements
{QTtext}{font: Arial}{justify: center}{size: 12}{backcolor:0, 0, 0}
{timescale: 100}{width: 286}{height: 0}
[00:00:03.00]
{justify:left}this is my first slide
[00:00:06.00]
{justify:left}this is my first slide2
[00:00:10.00]
{justify:left}this is my first slide3
[00:00:12.00]
{justify:left}this is my first slide4
[00:00:20.00]
{justify:left}this is my first slide5
Now let us have a closer look at the single elements of this file:
The first tag defines which type of file this is, like you know from HTML or XML also called the standard definition.
{QTtext}
The font for the subtitles is choosen, watch out that you pick a font that is readable on all possible sizes.
{font: Arial}
The basic alignment of the subtitle, you can choose from: left, center and right
{justify: center}
Font size, this has to be carefully chosen, depending on the width of the movie and the maximum length of your subtitle
{size: 12}
The background color of the subtitle
{backcolor:0, 0, 0}
FPS (frames per second of the movie)
{timescale: 100}
pretty obvious no? 
{width: 320}
also obvious BUT.. there is a “hack” if you put a zero in the height tag, QT will dynamically decide how big the subtitle box should be in case of very long subtitles go for a 0
{height: 20}
Time code, alignment and the subtitle. Time code format must be: hh:mm:ss:fr. you can also change the alignment for every single subtitle by changing the justify to left, right or center. But you can also delete the justify tag if you want to keep the “global” style that you defined at the beginning.
[00:00:00.00]{justify:center}this is my first subtitle
With our .txt file done, start Quicktime Pro and open the txt file that you created. Now you thinking, What?? Is this guy nuts? opening a txt file with a media player? oh well let’s go for it
oh look at that.. quicktime shows us the text we typed in 
Next question.. How do we put the subtitles in our movie?
As strange as it sounds.. just follow this lines
1- Open the txt file and the movie where you want to have your subtitles in 2 different players.
2 – on the subtitles “movie” ensure that your playhead is at 00:00, and press CTRL+A (Select all) & CTRL+C (copy), you will notice that the small brackets underneath the timeline get darker.
3 – go to your movie movie , and press CTRL+ALT+V (add to movie)
This will place the text movie into our movie, and here you have your subtitles.
Hey we not finished yet.. there is one thing missing, maybe you would like to reposition the subtitle or to make it transparent.
On your subtitled movie, press CTRL+ J to open the movie properties, select the text track and open the visual settings tab
Go through all the settings, play with them, you can view the changes dynamically.
Now that you’re done, you just need to save the file as you may want to deliver them, for an iPod as an M4V or as a mov or what ever you want.
Have fun making subtitles
Tiago Dias
I just tried some new s/w posted on versiontracker today called MovCaptioner that adds a text track automatically. It’s pretty cool. Here is the direct url to their website: http://www.slidesnow.com/movcaptioner
You basically keep typing what you hear (it repeats a snippet of the movie till you hit the return key then it moves on), then click a button and it makes the text track automatically. Oh, it makes transcripts too.
I didn’t know you could have a text track play on an iPod, though. I’ll have to try that.
Thanks, Bill. BTW, I have just released a new version of MovCaptioner that will allow the user to create movie captions in SMIL format and Flash CS3 format as well as embedded QT caption tracks. It will also output transcripts with timestamps and improvements to the interface make it even easier to create and edit captions.
The newest version will allow Mac users to make SAMI captions with Windows Media movies and also SRT and SUB files that you can do closed captioning with Google Video. I also noticed that they changed the link to their website. It is now http://www.synchrimedia.com
Now, if they could just make a Windows version!
If you tire of manually lining things up and/or typing I would suggest CaptionSync, an automated captioning service which also has some tutorials on embedding captions and subtitles into vodcasts at http://www.automaticsync.com/caption/podcaption.htm
Hey, Bill,
Is there a version of Movcaptioner for Windows? I can’t find a version for Windows on the http://www.synchrimedia.com.
If you have one, would u mind mail me? leomayleomay@gmail.com
Thanks for the guide – really helpful. But I wonder if ou’vecome across this particular problem? I just finished adding captions to a “Hitler’s Downfall” mashup video, but after I uploaded to YouTube all the captions were missing! Any ideas or hints?
I am so thankful for your tutorial of mp3 player with playlist. Now, I wanted to add the photo of the artist anywhere on stage. Can you kindly help me?
I mean when I click ctrl+A.
Hi and interesting reading. I have done this a couple of times on my pilots and serials. Right now I am going to a show in Holland and have burnt my QT movies with iDVD… guess what. All these text have disappeared.
Is there anyone that has a clue?
Leif
TO the people’s whose captions disappeared, sounds like you used “Save” or “Save As…” instead of “Export…”
a good post keep good workinh
Hi there,
Thanks for the tutorial, it was really useful. I know this is an old article but if there is anyone out there who could tell me if its possible to make the subtitle background transparent the help would be much appreciated! Thanks!
Hello there,
This is a message for the webmaster/admin here at blog.six4rty.ch.
May I use some of the information from your blog post right above if I give a link back to your website?
Thanks,
Jules
Thanks for this tutorial, I tried to do it once but it was such a pain I quit.
You can use this technique to add hyperlinks, too. Just put the starting and ending times for display of the hyperlink in the time line. Example:
[00:01:52]
{HREF:A T} CLICK HERE for QuickTime Text Track tutorial. {endHREF}
[00:02:03]
A great way to add captions is to use World Caption – free from the University of Wisconsin.
http://lss.wisc.edu/worldcaption
And for greek subtitles: Greek Subtitles
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