Broadcast captions usually run to about 42 characters on at most two lines. When a caption holds more than that, it is split in two and its time divided in proportion to the text.
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How to use it
- Paste your captions or drop your .srt or .vtt file onto the box below.
- Set the characters per line and how many lines a caption may use. The defaults follow broadcast practice.
- Check the result and download the rewrapped file in the same format you started with.
Need the captions in the first place? FastScribe turns your own audio or video file into an SRT or VTT caption file: upload it and download timed captions.
Transcribe with FastScribe →Frequently asked questions
Why 42 characters and two lines?
That is roughly what broadcast captioning settles on: short enough to read in the time a caption is on screen, and narrow enough not to cover the picture. It is a convention rather than a rule, so change it if your player differs.
What happens to the timing when a caption is split?
The original time span is divided between the new captions in proportion to how much text each holds, which tracks speech better than splitting it evenly. The last piece ends exactly where the original did.
Will it break a long word in half?
No. A word longer than the line limit is given its own line rather than being cut, because a broken word is harder to read than one that overhangs slightly.
Does it change the words themselves?
Never. Only where the line breaks fall and, when a caption is split, where one caption ends and the next begins. Every word you started with is still there in the same order.