Timbra
Caption positioning
Configure the on-screen position of captions
For a Timbra project using our HLS or plugin outputs, you can control where captions and audio events appear on the video screen. You can position captions manually, or have them move automatically to avoid on-screen text.
Manual positioning
You can configure caption and audio event positioning separately from the Languages & settings tab on the live project page.
Configuring position
Click the Configure caption position button to open the positioning editor. To position audio events, click Configure audio event position instead.
You can configure four settings:
- Horizontal – Controls how far from the left edge of the video the caption appears, expressed as a percentage of the video width.
- Vertical – Controls how far from the top edge of the video the caption appears, expressed as a percentage of the video height.
- Horizontal anchor point – Determines which part of the caption the horizontal position applies to: the left edge, centre, or right edge.
- Left anchor = left-aligned text
- Centre anchor = centre-aligned text
- Right anchor = right-aligned text
This setting also controls text alignment:
- Vertical anchor point – Determines which part of the caption the vertical position applies to: the top edge, middle, or bottom edge.
By combining these four settings, you can position captions anywhere within the video frame.
Presets
For convenience, a number of presets are also available:
- Grid presets – Place captions in one of nine standard positions: top left, top centre, top right, middle left, middle centre, middle right, bottom left, bottom centre, or bottom right.
- Default position – Resets the position to the default location:
- Captions: bottom centre
- Audio events: top centre
Applying changes
Click Apply position settings to save your changes. Position changes only affect captions and audio events generated after the change is applied. Existing captions will retain their original position.
Please note that changes may take a few seconds to appear in the live preview, as Timbra generates captions slightly ahead of live playback.
Automatic OST positioning
⚠️ This feature is in early release and may change. To enable it for your team, contact your CaptionHub account manager or submit a ticket.
Automatic OST positioning keeps your captions from covering on-screen text (OST), such as speaker names, slide titles or lower thirds, so viewers can always read both.
It works with the same outputs that support manual caption positioning. On other outputs, captions stay in their default position.
Configuring automatic OST positioning
You can configure automatic OST positioning from the Languages & settings tab on the live project page, just underneath the buttons for configuring the position manually.
There are two modes:
- Fixed position – captions appear in the position set by the operator.
- Avoid on-screen text – CaptionHub watches the flow’s video for on-screen text. When text appears where the captions are, the captions move out of its way. Once the text has gone, the captions return to the position set by the operator.