Subtitles

Subtitles are per-language subtitle files attached to a video. You add and manage them in the asset manager, and write their cues in the subtitle editor.

Adding a subtitle to a video

Select a video, and its properties show a Subtitles list with one row per course language:

• Click a row to open the subtitle editor. A language with no file yet opens an empty editor, so you can build the subtitle from scratch.
• The import icon reads a prepared .srt or .vtt file into the editor. Nothing is stored yet — an imported file becomes part of the course only when you save it, so you can look it over and correct it first.
• The trash icon removes that language's subtitle from the video.

SRT and VTT files

You can import subtitles as either WebVTT (.vtt) or SubRip (.srt). An .srt file is converted to .vtt automatically — that's the format the course stores and serves, so a converted file behaves exactly like one you imported as .vtt.

Cue timings and text are preserved as they are. Formatting is not — it's cleaned up first.

Cleanup when a subtitle is saved

Subtitle files come from all sorts of tools, and carry plenty of markup a course has no use for. Anything outside the supported set is removed when the file is saved.

What gets removed:

• Formatting codes like {\i1} or {\an8} — ASS/SSA-style overrides.
• Unsupported tags — anything outside the four supported tags, including <font color>, and all attributes such as inline style or classes.
• Inline timestamps like <00:00:19.500>, used for karaoke-style word timing. The player follows the cue times instead.
• Cue positioning — the player places subtitles itself.
• Unknown or partial styles — a style must be one of the four subtitle styles, and must apply to the whole cue.
• File-level style blocks — STYLE and REGION sections, which the player's own layout replaces.

TIP

You don't need to prepare a file before importing it. Bring whatever your subtitle tool produced and let the cleanup handle the rest.

Text formatting

Four tags are supported inside a cue:

• <i>…</i> — italic
• <b>…</b> — bold
• <u>…</u> — underline
• <br> — a line break

Colour and font aren't set per cue. The look of a subtitle comes from its style instead, so subtitles stay consistent across a course.

How subtitles wrap

Subtitle text is placed for you: near the bottom of the video, centered, and using at most 70% of the width so it stays clear of the controls at either side. It wraps automatically to fit, split evenly across lines, at every size from a small embedded player to fullscreen.

Line breaks of your own aren't kept — whether they came in with an imported file or you typed them with Enter, they become spaces. The one exception is <br>.

INFO

You don't need to balance line lengths per language. Write each cue as a normal sentence and let the player wrap it.

Forcing a line break

When a cue genuinely needs to break at a specific point, add <br> where you want the break:

00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:07.000
First line<br>second line

WARNING

<br> is a hard break: it stays fixed no matter how large or small the video is shown. On a small embedded player a manually broken line can look cramped or run off the edge where automatic wrapping would have adapted. Use <br> only where a break is genuinely needed.

A hard break also doesn't survive translation — it comes back as a space. That's usually right, since a break chosen for German line lengths rarely suits French.

Subtitle styles

A subtitle's appearance comes from one of four styles. Two things vary: the text colour (light or dark), and whether the cue sits on a high-contrast bar.

Style	Looks like
Light	White text with a soft drop shadow. The default, and right for most footage.
Dark	Black text, no shadow. For consistently bright footage.
Light (high contrast)	White text on a black bar.
Dark (high contrast)	Black text on a white bar.

The high-contrast styles drop the shadow and put a slightly translucent bar behind the cue, so the text stays readable over busy footage where a shadow alone isn't enough. Switching between styles never changes where a cue's lines wrap.

You set styles in two places:

• A default for the whole course — Subtitle Style in Content styles. It applies to every subtitle in the course.
• A style on a single cue — set in the subtitle editor under Style. It overrides the course default for that one cue, which is what you want when the footage changes brightness partway through a video. Leave it on Course default to follow the course-wide setting.

While you edit, a cue previews exactly as a learner will see it, style included. Like any other edit, a style change reaches the course when you save.

Skipping through a video

When a video is set to allow skipping, learners get a skip button while it plays. Each click jumps to the start of the next subtitle cue, so a learner can click forward through the video one line at a time. Your cue timings double as the points the skip button lands on.

When no cues remain ahead, the next click jumps to the end of the video.

A video that allows skipping but has no subtitle file in the language being shown has nothing to step through, so its skip button jumps straight to the end on the first click. If you want learners to move through a video piece by piece, give it subtitles in that language.

You turn this on per video with Allow skipping the video in the video's properties, and per video transition with Allow skipping the transition.

When something looks off

• The import is rejected. Only .srt and .vtt files are accepted. Convert other subtitle formats to one of those first.
• Formatting disappeared after saving. Only <i>, <b>, <u> and <br> are kept — see Cleanup when a subtitle is saved for everything that gets removed.
• A wordy language shows several short lines. Check the cue for stray <br> tags — those force breaks the player would otherwise smooth out. Without them, the text wraps to fit.
• Words run together. Usually a tag splitting a word, or a <br> placed mid-word with no surrounding spaces. Keep tags around whole words.
• A cue is hard to read over the footage. Give that cue one of the high-contrast styles rather than editing its text.
• A line break vanished after translating. Hard breaks don't survive translation — re-add <br> in the translated cue if the break still makes sense there.
• The subtitle doesn't appear at all. The file must be in the video's audio language. See Video subtitles in the translation tool article for why a subtitle might not show up.
• The skip button jumps straight to the end. The video allows skipping but has no subtitle cues to step through in the language being shown. Add subtitles to let learners move through it cue by cue.

See also

• Subtitle editor — writing, timing and styling a video's subtitles.
• Content styles — the course-wide subtitle style, and the fonts subtitles inherit.
• Translation tool — translating subtitle files across languages with DeepL.
• Asset manager — uploading the video a subtitle belongs to.
• Course localization — how per-language assets are assigned.