Types of captions

Synthesia supports three types of captions:

• Dynamic captions: a fully customizable canvas element, covered on this page. You control their style, color, position, and animation.
• Closed captions: automatic and non-customizable—these are wholly based on your video's script (any pronunciation adjustments you've applied won't be visible; only the script itself will become the closed captions). Viewers can toggle them on or off wherever Synthesia's own player is used—the share page, embeds, and SCORM exports. You cannot set these to "on" by default.
• Burned-in captions: permanently part of the video and can't be turned off. Toggle Burned-in captions on before selecting the blue Generate button. These matter once a video is downloaded as MP4 and used somewhere outside Synthesia's player.

Dynamic captions

Dynamic captions help keep your viewers engaged and focused on the video, making your content more accessible and social-media ready.

By default, captions display the entire scene script when first added to a scene. Use triggers to define which part of the script you'd like each captions element to include.

If your video has a brand kit applied, captions automatically pick up its colors and fonts. You can still customize the color and other settings for any individual captions element at any time—you aren't restricted to the brand kit's defaults.

Add dynamic captions

1. Click the Captions button in the toolbar.

2. Select a caption format to add it to the canvas:

   

3. Position the captions by dragging them to the desired location in the scene, the same way you would any other canvas element.
4. To apply the same captions style and add them in the same position (you can adjust this per-scene later), copy the caption element, then select the scenes to paste it into. This works like standard file selection controls in most file browsers:
   • To select specific scenes: Click a scene to select it, then Ctrl/Cmd + click any other scenes to add them individually, in any order.
   • To select a range of scenes: Click the first scene, hold Shift, then click the last scene, to select a contiguous range of scenes.
   • To select all scenes: Click any scene, then press Ctrl/Cmd + A to select all scenes.
   • Paste the element (Ctrl/Cmd + V, or right-click > Paste) to apply it to every selected scene at once. This works for copying and pasting any element between scenes, not just captions

Dynamic caption settings

To change the styling of your captions, select the caption element and adjust its settings from the inspector panel at the right of the editor.

Dynamic captions have the following parameters that can be set after selecting them:

1. Change preset: Change the caption format style.
2. Color: Change the color for the Background, Text, Active Text, and Active Background of the captions.
3. Motion: Change the animated movement of the captions. Only one of these options can be selected at a time.
   1. None: Captions appear as static text on the screen.
   2. Karaoke: Each word is shown in a different color as it is spoken, with no background color applied to the captions.
   3. Highlight: Each word is highlighted individually as it is spoken.
   4. Color: Each word is shown in a different color as it is spoken, with a background applied to the captions.
   5. Reveal: Words appear progressively as they are spoken, instead of all at once.
   6. Impact: Each word appears individually as it is spoken.
4. Style: Adjust the text style of the captions. Only one of these options can be selected at a time.
   1. None: No outline, shadow, or background styling.
   2. Outline: Change the outline color and thickness.
   3. Shadow: Add text shadow, then select a style (soft, regular, or retro), color, and opacity for the shadow.
   4. Background: Add a solid background, and adjust the border radius of the background.
5. Text: Basic settings for caption text.
   • Change the font family, size, and color.
   • Apply bold, italics, or underline styles.
   • Adjust the alignment of the text in the caption box.
   • Set the line height and letter-spacing.
6. Layer: Adjust the opacity of the captions.