Where is the SRT captions option in FCPX? I don't see it.

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Level 3

592 points

Where is the SRT captions option in FCPX? I don't see it.

Apple says that the release of FCPX 10.4.4 has the ability to create and read SRT closed captions. I have 10.4.6, but when I try to add captions to my movie, my only choices are iTT and CEA-608. I don't see any option to create SRT captions.

Also, today I uploaded a video to YouTube from FCPX with iTT captions, and on the YouTube site, some of the captions are missing the formatting I added, and they also randomly appear on the left side of the screen rather than in the center. It may be a YouTube issue, but, I did have a lot of problems trying to add color to a certain portion of text in my captions in FCPX, the formatting would frequently not stick and I'd have to do it sometimes 3 times to make it stick. Seems like a bug in FCXP captions, anyone else notice this?

BTW, I'm running that latest versions of macOS Mojave.

iMac 27", macOS 10.14

Posted on Apr 26, 2019 2:40 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

spherico

Level 2

474 points

Apr 27, 2019 5:57 AM in response to TomNYC

Lot of questions ;-)

Some of them already answered. Just to summarise and add some notes.

SRT:

1) To create SCC or SRT Caption roles use the "Modify -> Edit Roles -> Captions" menu and add a language to the SCC or SRT roles.

2) To import SRT you just go to "Import -> Captions". Select language and a new role will be created automatically. Be aware that 'color coded' SRTs won't import correctly as long as not every caption starts with its own correctly set color code.

3) To export SRT go to "Export Captions" or do the export to a side car file when sharing the movie. Be aware that YouTube ignores colors (and styles?) when using SRT.

4) To convert a Caption Role to SRT.

a) Create an SRT role as explained above.

b) Select all captions of the role you want to convert and use "ctrl-click -> Duplicate Caption to New Language" to create a backup.

c) Select all captions of your copy and use "Modify -> Assign Caption Roles -> 'your srt role'"

d) Be aware that you will loose all formatting - styles, color.

ITT:

Exporting ITT with 'color coded' captions creates 'miss-aligned' captions cause of 'useless blank spaces'.

I created a little free app last year to fix the ITT files:

http://www.spherico.com/filmtools/TitleExchange/XTMojave/fixITT.dmg

Regarding the problem that some formatting doesn't work I have no real idea except deleting the preferences.

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Answer 2

TomNYC Author

Level 3

592 points

Apr 26, 2019 9:55 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks! Do you know if it's possible to take all iTT captions and change their role to SRT? I'm hoping YouTube won't do the weird things it's doing with my iTT captions if I provide them in SRT format instead, but I really don't want to re-type all the dialog again if I don't have to.

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