> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.premierecopilot.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Smart Captions

> Styled, animated captions burned onto your timeline — karaoke highlighting, boxes, shadows, emojis.

Smart Captions turns your sequence into styled captions on the timeline: word-by-word karaoke highlighting, boxes, strokes, shadows, pop animations and auto-placed emojis — the social-video caption look, rendered and placed for you.

It works in two stages: **transcribe and edit the text**, then **design the look**. The first stage is the exact same editor as [Subtitles Pro](/features/subtitles-pro) — this page covers the design stage.

Works in **Premiere Pro** and **DaVinci Resolve**.

## Quick Start

<Steps>
  <Step title="Transcribe">
    Open **Smart Captions**, set the language and caption limits, and click **Transcribe**. See [Subtitles Pro](/features/subtitles-pro) for the transcription settings — they're identical.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Fix the text">
    Correct any wrong words and caption breaks now. Text is not editable after the captions are rendered.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add emojis (optional)">
    Click **Auto Emojis** to have one picked per caption. The **Animated** switch makes them animated emojis.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Design Captions">
    Click **Design Captions** to open the style panel.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Style and preview">
    Adjust the design — the preview updates on a real frame from your timeline.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Apply to Project">
    Pick an **Export Location**, then click **Apply to Project**.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Note>
  Smart Captions handles sequences up to **30 minutes**. Rendering animated captions is far heavier than a plain transcription, hence the tighter limit than Subtitles Pro.
</Note>

<Warning>
  Captions arrive as **rendered clips**, not editable text layers. You can move, trim or delete them, but you cannot retype a word. Get the text right before you leave the transcription stage.
</Warning>

## The design panel

### Preview

The preview shows your captions over a **real frame from your timeline**. Two buttons sit in its corner:

* **Refresh Styles** — re-renders the caption with your current settings.
* **Refresh Timeline Frame** — grabs a new frame at the playhead.

**Drag the caption in the preview** to set where it sits in frame. Drag the emoji to place it independently.

<Tip>
  Refresh the timeline frame onto your *busiest* shot, not a clean one. Captions that stay readable over the worst background are readable everywhere.
</Tip>

### Typography

| Control                                      | Range                | Notes                                                                       |
| -------------------------------------------- | -------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Font**                                     | your installed fonts | The actual font file is used for the render — what you see is what you get. |
| **Size**                                     | 20–300               | Relative to your sequence resolution.                                       |
| **Nb Lines**                                 | 1–3                  | How many lines a caption wraps onto.                                        |
| **Letter Spacing**                           | -10–50               | Negative tightens.                                                          |
| **?** button                                 | toggle               | Strips punctuation from the captions.                                       |
| **TT** button                                | toggle               | ALL CAPS.                                                                   |
| **Text Color / Stroke Color / Stroke Width** | 0–20                 | A stroke is what keeps text readable over any background.                   |

<Tip>
  For social captions: a heavy sans, ALL CAPS, punctuation off, and a stroke of 4–8. Those four choices do most of the work.
</Tip>

### Subtitles Box

A background panel behind the whole caption: background and stroke colours, **Opacity**, **Radius**, **Pad Top / Pad Bot / Padding H**, **Stroke Width**.

Use it when your footage is bright or busy and a text stroke alone isn't enough.

### Shadow

**Color**, **Opacity**, **Softness** (0–20), **Distance** (0–50), **Angle** (0–360).

<Tip>
  A soft, near-black shadow at low distance separates text from the image far more subtly than a box. Big distances read as a 90s title effect.
</Tip>

### Active Word

This is the karaoke effect — the word currently being spoken is highlighted.

| Control                    | What it does                                                 |
| -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Active Color**           | Colour of the word being spoken.                             |
| **Left Side / Right Side** | Colour of the words already said and the ones still to come. |
| **Active Scale**           | 100–200% — how much the active word grows.                   |

<Tip>
  Dimming the **Left Side** and **Right Side** colours while keeping the active word bright creates the follow-along effect that keeps viewers reading. Keep Active Scale near 110–130% — above that the line reflows visibly on every word.
</Tip>

### Active Box

A box drawn behind the active word instead of the whole caption: colours, opacity, radius, vertical and horizontal padding, stroke.

<Note>
  Active Box and Subtitles Box can be combined, but a box behind a box on a stroked font is usually one effect too many. Pick the one that carries the look.
</Note>

### Animations

* **Zoom In** — the caption pops in.
* **Motion Blur** — adds blur to the movement.

### Emojis

Enable the section, then set **Emoji Scale** (50–200%) and **Pos X / Pos Y**. The emojis themselves come from the **Auto Emojis** button back in the transcription stage — turn the section on here without having generated them and nothing appears.

<Tip>
  Place emojis just above the caption rather than beside it: side placement shifts with every caption width, top placement stays visually stable.
</Tip>

## Presets

The preset bar at the bottom saves your whole design and reloads it in one click. Build one per channel or per format — it's the difference between a five-minute setup and a thirty-second one on every video.

## Apply to Project

Set an **Export Location**, then click **Apply to Project**. The captions are rendered, downloaded to that folder, and placed on your timeline.

<Warning>
  The render can take a while and the host app may look frozen near the end while the clips are placed. Let it finish.
</Warning>

## Common Pitfalls

<Warning>
  * **Sequence longer than 30 minutes** → refused. Use [Subtitles Pro](/features/subtitles-pro) with an SRT instead, or split the sequence.
  * **Text typo spotted after applying** → undo, go **Back** to the transcription, fix it, and re-apply. It cannot be fixed on the timeline.
  * **Emojis section on but no emojis visible** → run **Auto Emojis** in the transcription stage first.
  * **Captions unreadable on light footage** → add a stroke first, a shadow second, a box last.
  * **Caption size looks wrong** → it scales with sequence resolution. Re-check on a vertical sequence after designing on a horizontal one.
  * **Font missing from the list** → only fonts installed on your machine appear. Install it, then reopen the panel.
  * **Flickering captions** → raise **Max Gap** in the transcription stage; tiny gaps between words fragment the captions.
</Warning>

<Tip>
  **Recommended workflow:** transcribe → fix the text completely → Auto Emojis → design on your busiest frame → save a preset → Apply to Project.
</Tip>