Captions not showing Up in Storyline 360?

Oct 28, 2021

I have checked out other discussions on closed captions, but don't know how to solve my problem. I downloaded a YouTube video (as an mp4 file), and trimmed it to the one minute I need. I initially tried out the caption feature in Storyline (which I loved), but captions are not showing up when the video plays. User's Guide says Closed Captions editor works with everything "EXCEPT website video." So I added the captions in Camtasia. However, when video is inserted on my slide, captions still don't appear when I preview, or when I publish. Help please....what am I doing wrong?

Pinned Reply
Eric Santos

Hi Karen,

I have some great news to share. We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 86, we’ve included important fixes and new features.

One of the new features we’ve included: 

  • Position captions at the top or bottom of the slide to ensure closed caption visibility and prevent the obstruction of critical course content.

Launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer to take advantage of this update, and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You’ll find our step-by-step instructions here.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

6 Replies
Karen Cote

I checked it out, but it does not seem to apply to my mp4. I found a long thread titled "Closed Captions in Exported Video File" which seems to indicate captioning for MP4's has been a long-standing request, but has not been developed yet? So it would seem I have no way to caption my MP4 video in Storyline?

Jackie Ha

When I opened your story file and manually inserted the captions directly in Articulate, the captions showed up. This was in Preview mode of the entire slide, not just previewing the video. I don't think the button for captions is automatically turned on in the Player, so you'll have to check the player settings. If you want the captions to play on that slide as soon as the video starts, then put this trigger on the video slide:
Set Player.DisplayCaptions to value True When the timeline starts on this slide

Note: the captions for the video do not appear directly in the video, but towards the bottom of the slide. 

If you have already added captions in Camtasia, you should be able to export your captions as an SRT file and import them into Articulate. I found this article that may be helpful.

Karen Cote

I had already deleted the copy of the video with the captions done in Storyline, but I followed the instructions in the video link you sent to export the .srt caption file from Camtasia, and imported it into Storyline. I added the trigger (Adjust variable > Set Player.Display Captions to value True>When the timeline start on this slide), and now works! I wish we could enter coordinates for the captions to show up where I want them to on the slide (instead of just the bottom of the slide), but I'm very happy to have the captions show up automatically. Thank you so much for your quick reply!

Becca Levan

Happy to see Jackie was able to help solve this mystery, Karen! 

While you can change the font for Closed Captions, the ability to change the position hasn't made it to our roadmap just yet. We're tracking a feature request, so I'll share your thoughts in our report and relay any new developments. 

P.S. While we don't support JavaScript, I thought I'd share this discussion in case you want to give it a shot: 

Reposition Closed Captions

Eric Santos

Hi Karen,

I have some great news to share. We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 86, we’ve included important fixes and new features.

One of the new features we’ve included: 

  • Position captions at the top or bottom of the slide to ensure closed caption visibility and prevent the obstruction of critical course content.

Launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer to take advantage of this update, and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You’ll find our step-by-step instructions here.

Please let me know if you have any questions.