With text tracks, you can make your stories more accessible, provide content for use with muted sound, and offer translations in different languages. To do this, open the settings dialog for the audio or video file you want to manage text tracks for by clicking the "Edit settings" button under "Manage files".
In the dialog, select the "Text tracks" tab.
Here you can upload text tracks in SRT or VTT format. For each text track, you can specify the language, kind, and label.
If a video or audio file has text tracks, users can select them in video or audio players. Please note that subtitles are not displayed when a video is used as a background video or when an audio file is played as atmo of a section.
Kinds of text tracks
The following kinds of text tracks are supported:
- Audio Replacement Text Tracks are meant for users who understand a text track better than an audio track.
- Translation Text Tracks are meant for users who understand another language better than the language used in the audio track.
- Image Replacement Text Tracks are meant for users who understand a text track better than a video track. Image Replacement Text Tracks are often read aloud to the user by screen reading software supplied by the user.
Automatic subtitles
Users can display one of the text tracks as subtitles in video and audio players at any time. The user's selection is saved permanently.
By default, the "Automatic" option is selected in the subtitle menu in video or audio players. Subtitles are then automatically displayed under the following conditions:
- If the file has a translation text track in the story's language, it is automatically displayed. This helps users who understand the story's language but not the language of the file's audio track.
- If the file has an audio replacement track instead, it is displayed if the story is muted. Stories start muted until they are unmuted via the unmute button in the navigation bar. Please note that for technical reasons, it cannot be detected whether the volume has been muted outside the browser. This detection is also not possible on mobile devices.
Default text track
If the automatic text track selection does not produce the desired behavior, you can set a default text track for each video or audio element yourself. This will then be displayed unless the user selects a different option in the subtitle menu.
To do this, open the three-dot menu in the file field where you select the audio or video file for the element and select a text track as default.
