FAQ / Markers and captions for a video editor

How do I export markers and captions for my video editor?

VoiceOverAndOver writes four sidecar formats alongside your merged audio: an SRT caption file, a WebVTT caption file, a Premiere/Resolve CSV marker file, and an Audacity label track. Pick the ones your editor accepts and tick them on the merge screen before you export.

The four sidecars

SRT - the universal caption format. Read by Premiere, Final Cut, Resolve, Avid, YouTube, Vimeo, every LMS, and basically everything else.
WebVTT (.vtt) - the HTML5 video format. Used by Vimeo, browser-based players, and some LMSs that want VTT specifically.
Premiere/Resolve markers (.markers.csv) - a labeled marker per paragraph, on a timeline measured from your merged audio's start.
Audacity labels (.labels.txt) - if you bring the audio into Audacity for an additional pass, you get every paragraph as a labeled region.

Which to pick by editor

Adobe Premiere Pro: SRT for captions, the markers CSV for paragraph cues.
DaVinci Resolve: SRT for captions, the markers CSV for paragraph cues.
Final Cut Pro: SRT for captions. Final Cut imports markers from CSV/XML via third-party tools; some teams just use SRT cues as a marker proxy.
Avid Media Composer: SRT for captions.
Audacity: the labels.txt file imports as a label track.
YouTube/Vimeo/LMS direct upload: SRT (or VTT if the platform asks for it).

Note

Sidecar files use the merged-audio timeline. Even when you uncheck "Merge all audio tracks into one" and export per-paragraph stems, the sidecars still show the timeline as if the stems were glued together. That is exactly what you want when lining the stems back up inside an NLE.

Importing into Premiere

Drop the audio file onto a timeline.
File > Import > choose the .srt file. Premiere creates a captions track.
For the markers CSV, use Premiere's "Import Markers from CSV" extension, or paste markers manually. Each row of the CSV is one paragraph cue.

Importing into Resolve

Import the audio into the Media Pool.
Drag it onto the timeline.
File > Import > Subtitle... and choose the .srt file. Resolve creates a subtitle track.
The markers CSV imports through Resolve's Marker workflow.

Importing into Audacity

Open the merged audio in Audacity.
File > Import > Labels... and choose the .labels.txt file.
You now have a label track with one labeled region per paragraph.

If a caption is wrong, fix the text and re-export

Captions and markers are built from the paragraph text in the project. If a caption is misspelled or out of date, edit that row's text inside VoiceOverAndOver and export again. You do not need to re-record audio just to fix a caption.

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