Captions in FCP vs Plugins

I'm new to Captions. With the new integration of Captions in FCPX 10.4.1 is there an advantage that 3rd-party plugins have over what's built in?

For Example:
fxfactory.com/info/captionconverter/?utm...ign=captionconverter

JasonLA wrote: I'm new to Captions. With the new integration of Captions in FCPX 10.4.1 is there an advantage that 3rd-party plugins have over what's built in?

For Example:
fxfactory.com/info/captionconverter/?utm...ign=captionconverter

My answer is not really objective - I make some subtitle apps as well.
First of all the above mentioned app is not a plugin.

So if you are new to Captions you need to know what Captions are (in the sense of FCP). FCP only handles Closed Caption.
These are either "side car files" or "embedded". In both cases they are not visible in the exported movie directly - only if you select them from the menu.
The "side car files" of FCP are in iTT format (iTunes Timed Text - I don't want to explain any technical details here, but feel free to ask me about those). You can use them if you want to publish to iTunes and a few of web based services.
You can use them for all languages with full UTF-8 character support.

The "embedded" ones use the CEA-608 format. Those can be used for broadcast in "America" and partially for web use.
They have several limitations (some tech details here before you get disappointed after or while creating them):
CEA is limited to a few languages and has a limited character support. Supported languages are: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Dutch.
You can also export this format as a "sidecar file".
Regarding timing you should be aware that CEA (scc) files only support 29.97 framerate. If you use other than this your subtitles might be slightly off.

Some social media platforms will support both, others only accept Subrip .srt. Finally each of them has a preferred format.
Both of the above formats can be imported into FCP.

If you want to have burned in subtitles you can't use none of the above.

To create subtitles/captions in one of these formats it's very easy within FCP and finally often enough there is no external app needed.
If you need burned in subtitles you have to work with Motion Titles or with Motion Generators. To create those subtitles is not that comfortable. Additionally you can't export them for use with social media or other things.

Probably the most popular format around is Subrip srt. There are many apps which allow you to create those files. Many of them are free. You can even use youTube to create them for you if the language spoken is in English or French (don't know about Spanish, but German is not recommended) and everything is clearly pronounced.
Those apps allow to import a movie and type/add the subtitles in sync with the movies. Depending on the price you have more or less features.

To get the srt file into FCP you need to convert them to make them usable with FCP.
For Closed Captions (iTT, scc) there are many free online services.
For subtitle Motion Titles there are a few with different options and features and within a price range from around 20 to 50 USD - exception is Annotation Edit with 250 EUR, but it is a full blown subtitle app.

To get an srt out of FCP choices are less.
When you started with CEA you need a scc to srt conversion tool. There are only a very few apps and there is no free or cheap option as far as I know since the format itself is a bit complicated. So you better double this track inside FCP and convert to iTT inside FCP, then export.
For iTT there are several ones, no free one for my knowledge but a lot of more very affordable ones, starting at 10 USD.

Looking at the app mentioned above for a price of 99/199 USD my honest opinion is: way to expensive.
It has nice interface - okay, but what are the advantages?
Creating caption/subtitle files without sync to a visible movie?
Creating a second column for translation? You can do that in Numbers for free.
Finding text or timecode is much more comfortable in FCP (or Numbers and Excel)

So use a free app to create subtitles if you don't want to do it in FCP. If you want to stay in FCP Ripple training has a video about that.



To convert to "Burned in titles", also at Ripple Training:

www.spherico.com/filmtools/TitleExchange/XTCC/index.html

To convert to SRT/WebVTT try my X-Title Caption Extract
www.spherico.com/filmtools/TitleExchange/XTCE/index.html
(there is a bug with the Facebook Extension, but you can change it easily)

Again this is not an objective comment!

Andreas

"Regarding timing you should be aware that CEA (scc) files only support 29.97 framerate."

Isn't there a CDP Frame Rate value in 608 that allows for different frame rates? We broadcast 59.97 and have never had a timing issue. But I'm no expert on the inner workings of CC technology.

You're both right and wrong

CEA supports all frame rates, but Apple CEA only 29.97

In addition to what I said above:

DaVinci Resolve is an excellent SRT to SCC converter.