Forum Discussion
Customizing Captions in Storyline
I am building a course that will be presented in six languages, each its own scene. The videos will all be in English, with translated captions in each version. The standard caption box blocks some onscreen text. Is there a way to 1) move the caption box to the top of the screen (on a caption by caption basis) and/or 2) reduce the opacity of the gray-ish box? Perhaps even get rid of the box and have colored captions (think old foreign movies on TV - yellow subtitles).
Hi, Ashleigh,
There's no way to move the caption box, and I'm not aware of any way to change its color or opacity.
In some translated projects that I've done, we had the captions added directly to the videos, and then inserted the captioned MP4s into Storyline. With this method, the captions don't interfere with other items on the slide (though, depending on the content, they might interfere with someone in the video). More importantly, it allows the captioned videos to be used outside of the eLearning course, for example, during ILT sessions.
You could create your own text boxes or shapes to hold the captions, and then either hide or show them with triggers that refer to the Player.DisplayCaptions variable. However, such custom captions are more likely to get out of sync, because the video might lag due to network issues while the objects keep appearing. (Again, that's why in-the-video captions work so well.)
Thank you, Judy, for taking the time to reply with some good suggestions! We'll make it work.
