How to fit captions when the language has very long words
Tell Vizard Agent which language and which word is breaking the line. It tests real font sizes against your longest words, renders several caption styles onto actual frames so you can compare them, and fixes the break point in the subtitle file rather than trusting the automatic wrap.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Ask for the comparison rather than for a fix. There's no single right size: it's a trade between legibility and fitting, and you should make that trade by looking at frames, not reading a recommendation. Name your longest word too, because Vizard Agent decides the size against the worst case rather than the average one.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
Some languages have words that don't fit a vertical frame at a normal caption size, and rewriting can't help because there's no shorter way to say them. The answer is typographic. Automatic wrapping breaks inside a long word or pushes it onto its own line, so the break point is set in the file instead. In the session behind this article it:
- Transcribed every clip for exact word timings, analysed the pronunciation of the key word, and re-transcribed the rough cut for final timings.
- Generated animated captions, optimised the word wrapping and font size together, and split the captions into shorter phrases for the vertical frame.
- Found the wrapping line in the subtitle file and inspected it, then tested styles that support the script properly.
- Compared three styles side by side on the real text, checked sizes sixteen to eighteen on the difficult words, and reviewed two named presets against each other.
- Built the final captions with the key words highlighted, reviewed twelve frames across the video and rendered the reel.
When does this not work well?
There's a floor below which none of this helps. Past a certain size captions stop being readable on a phone at arm's length, and then the honest answers are a different frame, fewer words on screen, or accepting two lines. Extremely long German and Finnish compounds can defeat any size, and the typeface has to support the script.
Common questions
Will it shorten my words? No. Vizard Agent treats this as typography, not as rewriting.
Can it break a word across two lines? Yes, at a sensible point. Vizard Agent sets it rather than leaving it automatic.
Is two lines acceptable? Often yes, and Vizard Agent prefers it to shrinking. Three rarely is.