Edit captions

Fix words, split, merge, find and replace. Two view modes for two ways of working

The Captions tab is where the words and the timing live. Tabs switch with ⌘1 ⌘2 ⌘3 ⌘4. ⌘1 lands you here.

Two view modes

A picker at the top of the tab toggles between them.

Segments (default) shows one row per caption with editable text, timing, and per-row controls. This is where most editing happens.

Script is a flat read-only view of the whole transcript. Drag-select a word range, right-click, and send the selection to a paper edit. Useful when you're scanning long footage for a quote and don't want the segment chrome in the way.

Keyboard shortcuts

Once you're in Segments view, the keyboard does most of the work.

• Space: play / pause
• ⬆ / ⬇: previous / next segment
• Return: seek the player to the selected segment's start
• ⌘A: select all segments
• ⌘\: split the selected segment at its word midpoint
• ⌘J: merge the selected segment with the next one
• Delete: delete the selected segments
• ⌘F: find
• ⌥⌘F: find and replace
• ⌘S: save (asset-keyed mode)

Fixing a typo doesn't break timing

When you edit a segment's text, ReelChest matches the new words against the old using a longest-common-subsequence pass. Words you didn't touch keep their original timestamps. New or changed words get their timing interpolated across the gap. So fixing a "their" to a "there" doesn't ripple through the rest of the segment. Type freely.

Find and replace

⌘F opens a find bar. ⌥⌘F adds replace. Both are case-insensitive. Find Next wraps to the top when it runs out. Replace All hits every match across every segment in one undo step, so if you nuked the wrong word, ⌘Z brings it all back.

Words per line and lines per caption

Two sliders at the bottom of the Captions tab.

• Words per line: 1 to 12. Default 6.
• Lines per caption: 1 to 3. Default 1.

Changing either re-breaks every segment using the new layout. It's idempotent, so running it twice with the same numbers does nothing. The default reads cleanly on a 1080p frame at standard caption sizes. Tighten the words per line if you're cutting vertical short-form.

Edits are undoable individually. ⌘S saves on disk-backed transcripts. Mosaic captions don't save here; they ride with the timeline until you export.