Automated Highlighted Captions

[Ana Dumbrava]

I am currently working on a few videos that require captions. They are testimonial style videos featuring one person speaking. I really wanted captions that show a longer phrase, with each individual word highlighted as it is spoken. Making it easy for people to follow along even if they are listening in a noisy place or have their device muted. I have attached a sample.

I was able to easily create captions using automated captions that were well timed. Then I went on to try to add the automated individually highlighted words, since I couldn't find a setting specifically for this I tried to find a work around. All of which were unsuccessful. I was able to manually do the highlighted caption style for a sample, but it was tedious. Does anyone know if there is a way to do the style of caption I want automatically? Is there a work around I might've missed?

Unsuccessful Workarounds:

First I tried making another set of captions layering them over each other and changing the settings of the top layer so only one line or 12 characters or 0.5 seconds of dialouge was displayed as a caption, and highlighted a different colour however, the words would always be aligned differently the the ones in full phrases, rather than perfectly overlayed with them. Similarly, split captions did not work. I also looked into video tutorials, but there was none that matched what I wanted to do. I also looked into using After Effects, which also didn't seem to have a setting like that. Again, it also didn't seem like there was a stock motion graphic available that could do this. 

[Stan Jones]

Your description matches what your sample shows, and I think there are some other users who are interested in this.

And no, I can't think of any way that this can be done using current PR captions.

Option 1: convert captions to PR graphics text and modify. Even that would be tedious. I don't know if it is possible. And the last I knew, PR scripting does not expose the caption variables you need.

Option 2: convert captions to graphics text, and take it to After Effects. I think I could be done there, using expressions. If not expressions, scripting. Probably requires an expert to code it, but AE scripting expressions are not as hard as they first appear. (No, I am not that level of expert, so I am just giving an off the cuff guess.)

Stan