[Update, July 22, 2024. TV Tech just reported that the FCC approved an order that “gives viewers greater control over the display of closed captions. The R&O, the third by the agency to make television more accessible to those with disabilities, puts in place a “readily accessible” requirement for the display of closed captions that makes it simpler for viewers to access the settings of many covered devices to adjust the font, size, color and other features of the captions.” In other words, viewers, not creators, will be able to control how captions look.]
Besides televisions and set top boxes, covered devices include any device manufactured or used in the United States that is designed to receive or play back video transmitted with sound.
Adobe updated text and graphic styles in the March, 2024, update. A “style” is a format, like a template, that is applied to text or captions. They make it easy for all text to look the same – once you’ve determined the look – though you can always override a style to add an individual touch.
DON’T BOTHER FORMATTING CAPTIONS
Before I get into what’s new, I need to make an important distinction:
Although we are tempted to ornately format captions, the truth is that most caption formats don’t support different fonts, colors or sizes. Worse, the look of captions is most often dependent upon the player, not the originating caption file.
So, while you can make your captions blue Comic Sans italic, most likely the only person seeing them that way will be you.
CREATE A TEXT STYLE
Adobe overhauled text styling and introduced thumbnails and a revised style browser in the March update. While the Essential Graphics panel remains the same, viewing and selecting styles is now easier. You can even reuse styles across multiple projects – without reinventing the wheel each time.
Here’s an example – a podcast episode called “Breaking News…” which has an emphasis on things that break.
I used the Essential Graphics panel to create the look of the text. However, I want to reuse this between episodes, so I’ll create a style.
Select the text with the look you want.
Go to Essential Graphics and click the Grid icon in the style section. It will be to the right of the Linked Style menu which, initially, is empty. (red arrow)
If there are no styles, you’ll see this screen. Click Create style from text selection.
In this dialog, enter the name of the style you want to create. Then:
Click OK.
Thumbnails are now displayed in the Style Browser. Click the Back button (red arrow) to return to the Essential Graphics panel. There, you can click the Grid icon to view all existing styles or the Linked style menu to see a list of existing styles
To create a new style, once at least one style is created, click the Grid icon to display the thumbnails, then click the Plus icon (red arrow) and select Create style from text selection from the popup menu.
NOTE: You can apply a style to an entire title or, simply select specific text to apply the style just to that text. To apply a style without changing the font, right-click a style and choose Apply style without font (red arrow).
DELETE A TEXT STYLE
To delete a style that is project specific, go to the Project panel.
To delete a shared text style on a Mac or Windows go to:
[Home Directory] > Documents > Adobe > Common > Assets > Text Styles
CREATE A CAPTION STYLE
Caption styles are called Track styles, because they apply to all captions on that track.
Adobe’s help states: “If you want to use a local style as a linked style for graphics or a track style for captions, you can right-click the thumbnail and choose Set as linked style (text) or Set as track style (captions). This will add the local style to the project and link it to the text layer or caption track.”
EXTRA CREDIT
Here’s a link for more information from Adobe’s Help page.
