Best Practices for AI Video Captions
Readable, on-brand captions increase watch time. Here is how to tune Reka Clip captions without fighting the edit.
May 16, 2026 1 min read
Captions are not accessibility extras anymore—they are creative. On vertical video, they often carry more narrative weight than the audio.
Design for the thumb zone
Keep text inside the center 80% of the frame. Reka Clip’s safe defaults avoid the right-side engagement stack on most apps. If you add stickers or B-roll, re-check overlap before export.
Rhythm beats completeness
AI transcripts are a starting point. Edit for:
- line breaks at natural pauses,
- emphasis on one word per sentence,
- deletion of filler (“um”, “like”, false starts).
A 22-second clip with eight caption lines beats a wall of text.
Match tone to brand
- Gaming: punchy, ALL CAPS on reactions sparingly.
- Education: calmer pacing, numbers spelled consistently.
- Podcast: speaker labels only when two voices overlap.
Test mute-first
Watch once with sound off. If the story is unclear, rewrite captions before you tweak color grades.
Export checklist
- Contrast passes on OLED and LCD previews
- No captions touching face landmarks
- Hook line visible in frame zero
Small caption edits compound—teams that batch-caption in Clip routinely ship 2× more shorts per VOD.