Professional subtitling tool designed for Macs

Subtitling your video or film can open it up to a much larger audience but most subtitling apps on the market are for those Mac users that just want to add subtitles to a DivX file they’ve downloaded or a funny YouTube video.

For serious professionals that need something more powerful, the options are far more limited but there are some out there, such as MacCaption. MacCaption is designed for those that need maximum control over how their subtitles are processed and displayed on screen. It allows for the importing and exporting of captions and automatic syncing with images. Not though that in this demo, a watermark is left on captions and imports/exports are limited in size.

It’s pretty complex for beginners, although with a little time and effort, even non-professionals should be able to work it. To start with, create a text file of subtitles and import or drag into to the main window. Then select all of the captions and move them to the bottom of the screen where you’ll see the first line suddenly displayed. Then you need to import a QuickTime or DV file. Once it’s loaded, click on the Time Stamp button, listen to the dialog and press the ‘I’ key when you need to insert text. Type or drag the text and then click on Autosync and you’re done. You need to keep repeating this until all of your subtitles are edited.

Once you’re done, you can export the caption file to be edited or revised at a later date. For a professional application, MacCaption is surprisingly easy to use, although it is quite intimidating at first. For most people’s needs, it will be way too much but for professionals, it’s ideal.

MacCaption is a deceptively easy-to-use subtitling application for a professional tool although you’ll only need it if you’re a series movie maker.