Editing Caption Length in Canvas Studio

[MuppetDoctor]

Hello,

I'm enjoying many features of the new Canvas Studio, but I'm noticing that sometimes the length of time a caption remains onscreen is very short, sometimes only a second or two. I know it's a best practice to make captions visible for longer (while, obviously, having the caption matching what's happening onscreen), but I don't see a way to adjust the length of captions. Ideally, I'd like to find a way to set the captions to range from 3-7 seconds, depending on what's onscreen. Is there a way to do this? Is this a feature that might be added?

Thanks for your help!

[Chris_Hofer]

Good evening, @MuppetDoctor ,,,

(LOL!!!  Love your username!!!  Should I call you Dr. Honeydew or Dr. Teeth?)

Now...to you question...  Yes, you can do this...but not really within the Canvas Studio interface.  First, you will need to download the captions file to your computer.  It's either going to download as a *.srt file or a *.vtt file (these are closed captioning files).  You'll want to use a program on your computer like Windows Wordpad (not Notepad or Microsoft Word) to open up the file.  I use Wordpad because it's a simple word processing program in Windows that has some simple formatting tools.  It also displays the captions from your video well compared to Notepad.  The caption file should look something like the example shown on this webpage: https://www.3playmedia.com/2017/03/08/create-srt-file/

In your file, you can modify those times however you want.  Just be sure that you are not overlapping times from one block of text to the next.

Once you have the caption file ready to go, you'll need to re-upload it back to the video in the Studio library.  Here's the catch, though...  if you ever need to make changes to the captions again, you'll need to re-download the file, make the changes offline, and then re-upload it back to your video.  When you upload a caption file, it removes the ability for you to edit the captions online.

Here's some more information for you: How do I add captions to media in Canvas Studio?.

Hope that this will help you a bit.  Take care, and be well.

Signed...
Gonzo.  🙂