How to stop your captions breaking words across two lines
Tell Vizard Agent that no word may be split across two lines. Rather than asking the caption renderer to wrap more carefully, it builds the subtitle files with the line breaks already decided at word boundaries, then checks every line in the finished clips rather than spot-checking a few.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
State the rule as a rule. "Make the captions neater" is a preference that will be interpreted, while "break lines at word boundaries, never inside a word" is a condition Vizard Agent can check every line against afterwards. Most people ask for two lines and assume whole words come with it, so say both.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
A caption renderer wraps text to fit a width, and when a word doesn't fit it breaks the word. Asking for a different style doesn't change that. Getting there took three attempts, and the third changed the approach rather than the settings: decide the breaks before the renderer ever sees the text. In the session behind this article it:
- Transcribed the recording behind a set of vertical clips with word-level timings, so the word boundaries were known directly, then rendered a first set of captioned clips and reviewed the frames.
- Fixed the wrapping along with the pauses and sentence endings, and regenerated the captions in a plain two-line style.
- Checked the revised style and line wrapping on a contact sheet, eliminated the remaining mid-word wraps and verified every subtitle line kept its words intact.
- Built the subtitle files with the breaks already decided and confirmed they wrapped only at word boundaries.
- Increased the size while keeping the whole-word wrapping, since bigger text widens every line and can bring the splits back.
When does this not work well?
Sometimes no break position helps, because a word is simply longer than the line. In languages that build long compound words, or with very large type on a narrow vertical frame, the word won't fit however Vizard Agent breaks around it. Then the real choice is between a smaller size and a wider layout.
Common questions
What if a word is too long? Vizard Agent will reduce the size or tell you the layout is too narrow.
Can I change the size afterwards? Yes, and Vizard Agent re-verifies the wrapping when you do.
Why not just use a smaller font? It hides the fault at one size, and the fault comes straight back when someone makes the captions bigger. Vizard Agent decides the breaks instead.