User`s guide

Table Of Contents
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words spoken by off-screen speakers (commonly narrators) appear in italics (but italics can be
skipped if the speaker comes in and out of view). The words of on-screen speakers appear in the
normal (Roman) font.
The next convention concerns centering and non-centering. However, if centering the caption
would interfere with a graphic and/or important on-screen visual information, then the caption
should be moved to another location.
The main objective is to have each caption represent a single thought. There is no single right
way to caption a video, but a few additional guidelines may help:
1. Your captioning style should be consistent throughout the video.
2. Whenever possible, you should break captions into logical phrases. Captions randomly
broken up may convey a different meaning than intended.
3. Captions can indicate the location of the speaker. For instance, a caption on the left side
of the screen will indicate the speaker is on the left, while a centered caption shows that
only one person is speaking throughout a scene.
4. Words can be emphasized by underlining.
5. Use Insert Music Symbol to place a musical note at the beginning and end of musical
lyrics. Never paraphrase lyrics. Use the title of the song when possible.
6. Indicate sound effects in parentheses in lower case: (boom), (applause).
Selecting Multiple Caption Text Boxes
Many caption and text formatting operations will operate on more than one caption at a time so it
is sometimes useful to select multiple captions. A multiple caption selection is indicated by grey
shading of the caption text area in all captions that have been selected.
There are three ways to select multiple captions:
The first way to select multiple captions is to use Edit > Select All (Command-A) in the
main pull down menu. This will select all of the captions in the current Program.
The second way to select multiple captions is to click and drag the mouse in a specific
caption and drag the mouse up or down into adjacent captions. The location of the mouse click in
the first caption should be done in an area that does not contain any specific operation display or
control such as a time code indicator or the caption text area itself. Any blank area can be
chosen.
The third way to select multiple captions is to do a shift click or option-shift click in a
caption. The caption that is chosen becomes the anchor caption. You can use the shift key or
option-shift key click in any part of the caption except the caption text area. Once the anchor
caption is selected shift click in any other caption to select that caption and all of the captions
between that caption and the anchor caption. If you hold down the shift and option keys when
selecting a second caption all of the captions from the anchor caption to the last caption (or first
caption in the upward direction) will be selected. For example, a quick way to select all of the