Caption editor shows captions as black-on-black; almost impossible to edit the captions. Help please!

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Level 1

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Caption editor shows captions as black-on-black; almost impossible to edit the captions. Help please!

I successfully imported an iTT caption file, and the captions show up fine on the video as white on a black background. The problem is that when I try to edit it in the caption editor, the text is black-on-black, i.e. not visible.

When I drag to select text, the selected text is white-on-purple, so the text is definitely there, just black-on-black when not selected.

Obviously this makes it difficult-to-impossible to edit my captions, which need editing. The same problem happens in the Inspector.

All the images I see on line of the caption editor or inspector show white text on a black background.

Resetting the preferences didn't solve the problem, unfortunately.

Hope you can help!

Posted on Sep 11, 2019 12:34 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

spherico

Level 2

474 points

Sep 12, 2019 3:16 AM in response to nat-k

Not sure whether I understand what you mean.

Some screenshots could be helpful.

Anyway:

Try to duplicate the caption role.

Then assign a new "SRT" caption role to the duplicate. This will reformat all captions to the base settings.

If anything looks okay you can assign the original "ITT" role again and delete the bad one.

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Answer 2

nat-k Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 12, 2019 4:53 AM in response to spherico

Thank you! This is the caption on-screen in the viewer. It is correct:

This is the same caption in the caption editor. Note that although the text is not visible, it is there—the cursor is displaced:

...and if you drag from the right, the text is visible:

But when I add a caption manually, it works fine.

I will try your suggestion and put that in another reply, thanks.

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Answer 3

spherico

Level 2

474 points

Sep 12, 2019 4:24 PM in response to nat-k

nat-k wrote:

Thank you! Changing to SRT and then back solved the problem. In fact, you don't even need to duplicate the captions.

Having a "backup of whatever" always is a good idea for a first step :-)

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Answer 4

Sep 12, 2019 4:20 AM in response to nat-k

Try changing the color to something else and then change it back.

You can select all the captions at once very easily using the Timeline Index (command-shift-2), click Captions and command-A

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Answer 5

spherico

Level 2

474 points

Sep 12, 2019 5:20 AM in response to nat-k

This is weird, Never seen that.

The Inspector view might look like that, but never the Editor view.

Where did the ITT come from?

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Answer 6

nat-k Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 12, 2019 4:19 PM in response to spherico

Thank you! Changing to SRT and then back solved the problem. In fact, you don't even need to duplicate the captions.

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Answer 7

nat-k Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 12, 2019 4:19 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I tried this on one caption, and it also seemed to solve the problem, thank you!

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Answer 8

nat-k Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 12, 2019 4:45 PM in response to spherico

spherico wrote:

Having a "backup of whatever" always is a good idea for a first step :-)

Definitely!!

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Caption editor shows captions as black-on-black; almost impossible to edit the captions. Help please!

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