How to stop your lower thirds and subtitles fighting for the same space
Ask Vizard Agent to assign each bottom-of-frame element its own band and its own time window. Shrinking the subtitles to clear a name strap works until the ticker appears, and then something else has to shrink. The durable fix is that two things never occupy the same strip at the same moment.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Describe the whole layout rather than the one collision you noticed. "The subtitles collide with the name strap" gets that collision fixed and leaves the next one waiting. Listing every element at the bottom, and saying which ones are fixed, lets Vizard Agent solve them all at once. The source credit and the logo are the ones people forget.
The bottom of the frame has the ticker, the lower-third name strap and burnt-in subtitles. Keep them out of each other's way: the ticker position is fixed, the rest can move.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
It separates the elements in space and in time. A lower third that only appears during the presenter segments doesn't share the frame with anything for most of the runtime. The work here went the other way first, fixing one collision at a time, and each fix created the next. In the sessions behind this article it:
- Shrank the subtitles so they stopped colliding with the lower third.
- Adjusted the subtitle scale again for the landscape frame, because the first reduction went too far.
- Moved the lower third so it no longer met the subtitles, and confirmed the two were separated at the opening.
- Restricted the lower third to appearing only during the presenter segments, the change that actually ended the loop.
- Lowered and lightened the subtitles again so they cleared a portrait on screen.
- Fixed the ticker's safe area and checked the subtitles weren't covering the news card behind it.
When does this not work well?
When there's genuinely not enough room. A vertical frame with a ticker, a strap and two-line subtitles has run out of bottom, and something has to give: fewer words per subtitle line, a shorter strap, or the ticker moved to the top. Vizard Agent will say which trade is cheapest rather than quietly shrinking type.
Common questions
Will the subtitles get smaller? Only as a last resort. Vizard Agent moves things before it shrinks them.
Can the strap show only sometimes? Yes, and it usually should. Vizard Agent gives it a time window per segment.
What about a two-line subtitle? It is planned for. Vizard Agent checks the wrapped height rather than one line.