Captions, subtitles and text duration

Here’s how I solved the problem of putting text on the screen without cutting clips in the main track. First I created a JPEG with a canvas size of 1920x1080, which is the size of my film. I filled the canvas with Black and saved the file.

In Shotcut I added a track labelled “Text & Titles” at the top of the stack. I added the JPEG file on that track, and it came in as a clip about 4 seconds long (I’m guessing a frame for each 30 pixels). I used Filter/ Alpha Channel: Adjust / and selected Invert.

I added the Filter: Text / Preset / Lower Third and Font: White selecting Use font size, 100 pixels, and Outline / Black / 2 pixels, .

Now I Copy and Paste that clip down the Text track, overlaying text where I need it, and edit to suit, beat to fit. OK, that’s an old government contractor saying: Build to suit, beat to fit, paint to match.

Cheers!

I’ve used that method too Carl, but I find it faster now to just slice and copy a part of the original track at the duration I need, then copy and paste it to a new track (at the same time position of course) and apply the text and fade-in/out to that.

Additionally it’s useful for other effects like a fade to black and white and so on.