How to use subtitles (Possible bug?)

Hello everyone!

I’ve been using Shotcut for a while now, and when I saw that the latest update had added a Subtitles feature, I was excited to use it. But I cannot for the life of me figure out how it works. I started by adding a subtitle track to my timeline, then create a subtitle, but they are always created at the beginning of the video, and no matter what I do, the subtitles I create seem to ignore the playhead. I can’t move the subtitles (with the Move Subtitle to Cursor Position tool), nor can I set their start/end. I can move them manually by dragging them, but this is obviously not the best way to do it. Can someone tell me if I’m doing something wrong? I assume this is something on my end, since I haven’t seen any complaints on the forum.

Any help is much appreciated.

I do not experience that problem. When I add a subtitle, it is added at the playhead.

Can you tell me what operating system you are using?
Also, which Shotcut package did you install?

The OS is Windows 10 Pro (64 bits), and as for the package, I’m not sure what you mean; I downloaded the Windows installer

Thanks for the info. I just downloaded the 24.08.29 installer from the download page and did a fresh install on my Windows 11 machine.

Here is a video of how it works for me:

Does it not work that way for you?

Thanks for the quick response.

It does not (although I wish it did! It’s exactly what I need). I tried to create multiple subtitles, but Shotcut won’t allow me, since it claims that “A subtitle already exists at this time”, as if the playhead is stuck at 00:00:00:00 (which it isn’t, I’m constantly moving it around).

Also, I’m not sure how relevant this might be, but I’m using markers and more than one video track.

Did you start the project before this new version? It sounds like the bug reported in this thread about the beta version: BETA version 24.08 now available to test - #37 by TJGM

In the problem project provided in that post it does to me what you describe. The fix:

  1. select Timeline > Output
  2. choose Properties
  3. click Edit…
  4. a dialog opens, simply choose OK
  5. save
  6. reopen the project
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Well I’ll be. The fix does indeed work!
Then again, I checked, and I downloaded the latest version of Shotcut on the 30th, and I started this project a couple of days ago at most. Maybe this happened because I didn’t make a fresh install?

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It is possible that you started using Automatic Video Mode, and it received a weird frame rate value from the first video you added to the project. I just searched the code for other places where the bug could be introduced but did not find it, except this case of automatic video mode.

Perhaps. I rarely go for Automatic, since Shotcut always starts me off with the last video mode I used (and I love it for that), and I tend to switch video modes quite frequently (usually alternating between YouTube long-form videos and Shorts, sometimes in 1080p, sometimes in 4K), so I tend to pay extra attention to that. Next time I start a new project, I’ll experiment a little bit and see if the problem persists, although with such an easy workaround, I can hardly call it a problem anymore.

Thank you both for your time and quick responses!

Did you make custom video modes that you are using? I just found that custom video modes made in previous versions can introduce this problem, and fixed that.

I did indeed, and that is good to know. Should I recreate these custom modes?

Yes, simply choose each one, then
Settings > Custom > Add…, enter the same Name, and click OK.

To help remember those names, do Settings > App Data Directory > Show and open the profiles folder. That is where they are saved as little text files that you can edit if you simply prefer. For example, change

frame_rate_num=60000000
frame_rate_den=1000000

To

frame_rate_num=60
frame_rate_den=1
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Perfect, thank you so much.