What you'll need
- A clip with clear speech: a talking head, a voice-over or a song with clear vocals
- After Effects with Captyne 1.5.9 or later, signed in
- A caption preset with a calm Normal style. White or light grey text with a stroke or shadow is a great base, because the highlight needs something quieter to stand out against.
Step 1Pick a preset
- Open your comp and make it the active comp, then open Window → Extensions → Captyne.
- On the Setup tab, click a preset thumbnail in My Presets. The selected preset gets a green border.
For karaoke, a simple preset works better than a busy one. Every word on screen is the same style until it's spoken, and then the highlight takes over. If the preset already has big pops, glows and colour changes, the highlight has nothing left to say.
Not sure which preset to use? Pick the plainest one you have. You'll design the highlight yourself in Step 4, and that's where the karaoke look really comes from.
Step 2Choose a reveal mode
Still on the Setup tab, find Grouping & Layout. The Reveal Mode decides how each phrase appears, and it changes the karaoke feel a lot:
| Reveal Mode | Karaoke result | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Group All At Once | The whole phrase is on screen, and the highlight moves across it word by word | Classic karaoke, lyric videos, interviews |
| Cumulative Words | Words appear as they're spoken, and the newest word is the lit one | Social clips that should feel more energetic |
| Cumulative Lines | Each line appears as a unit, and the highlight moves along it | Two-line captions |
| Single Word | Not for karaoke: only one word is on screen at a time | – |
AH has no effect in Single Word mode. Active Highlight needs other words on screen to contrast with, so pick one of the other three modes.
Then set the phrase size. Karaoke reads best with slightly longer phrases than typical social captions, so the eye can follow the highlight across a line:
- Words / Phrase: 5–7
- Words / Line: 3–4, so longer phrases wrap onto two lines
- Pause (s): leave the default. A longer pause in the speech always starts a new phrase, so the captions follow the speaker's rhythm.
Finally, set Emphasis Strategy. For a pure karaoke look choose Manual, so nothing is emphasised automatically and the highlight is the only thing that changes. You'll come back to this in Step 5.
Step 3Transcribe and check timing
Karaoke captions show off the timing of every single word, so it's worth one careful listen before anything is built.
- Make sure Open after transcribing is on under Review Transcript.
- Choose your Provider and click Transcribe.
- When the review opens, click a few words to hear them on their own. You'll hear exactly the slice of audio each word is timed to.
- Press Space to play at 1× and follow along. The │ marks show where each caption group starts, which is where the highlight jumps to a new phrase.
- Fix misheard words with a double-click. Clear a word to delete it, and type two words to split one.
- Click Looks good — go to Preview →.
Fixed words keep their timing, so a corrected word still lights up exactly when it's spoken. For a full worked example, see Proofreading an interview transcript word by word.
Step 4Turn on Active Highlight
On the Preview tab, find the Active Highlight card and switch on Enable Active Highlight. The Active Highlight Preview shows a static sample that updates as you change the settings, so you can design the look before generating.
| Setting | What it does | Try |
|---|---|---|
| Font color | Colour of the word being spoken | Yellow or your brand colour |
| Stroke / Width (px) | Outline around the lit word | Black, a few px, for busy footage |
| Bounding box | A box behind the lit word, with Pad X, Pad Y and Radius | Rounded box, small padding |
| Box shadow | Shadow under the box: colour, Opacity %, Distance, Blur, Angle | Soft and low, so the box lifts slightly |
| Drop shadow | Shadow on the lit text itself | Off if you use a box |
| Scale pop | A short size bump as the word lights up: Peak (%) and Duration (s) | 120% over 0.1s |
| Target | Whether the pop applies to Text only or Text + Box | Text + Box when you use a box |
Two looks that always work:
- Colour karaoke: white Normal text, yellow Font color, no box, a small scale pop. Clean and readable.
- Box karaoke: a bright Bounding box with a little padding and rounded corners, and a dark Font color so the lit word reads on the box. This is the popular social look.
Keep the pop small. A word is often lit for only a fraction of a second, and a big pop on every word makes the whole caption shake.
Step 5Keep emphasis words in mind
Active Highlight works on top of your preset's styles. A word that already uses the Emphasis style still gets the highlight when it's spoken, so think about how the two look together:
- Pure karaoke: with Manual emphasis, every word is Normal and the highlight is the only change. Easiest to read.
- Karaoke plus key words: click a word chip in the Interactive Preview to cycle it to Emphasis. Keep it to one word per phrase, and make sure your highlight colour is clearly different from the Emphasis colour, or viewers can't tell which word is being spoken.
Need to merge two words into one, like a first and last name? The merge button is hidden while Active Highlight is on. Switch it off, merge, then switch it back on.
More on emphasis choices in How to highlight key words in your captions.
Step 6Generate captions
Click Generate Captions. Captyne builds one text layer per word in your comp, with the preset's effects and animation and the highlight already set up.
Press Space in the Composition panel to preview. You should see each phrase appear, then the highlight travel across it in step with the voice. Watch at least one fast section and one slow section.
Want a different highlight colour or box after generating? Change the settings on the Active Highlight card and generate again. The old caption layers are replaced, and your transcript and edits stay as they are.
Step 7Fine-tune the timing
Transcription timing is very accurate, but karaoke makes small offsets visible: a word that lights up a frame or two before the sound, or a drawn-out word that stops being lit too soon.
- Find the word in the timeline. Each word is its own text layer.
- The highlight is built as keyframes on that word's layer. Select the layer and press U to show them, then drag the highlight keyframes a frame or two so the change lands with the sound.
- The word's own entrance animation is driven by layer markers. If the word appears too early or late, drag its marker instead. The animation follows, with no keyframes to touch.
- Scrub over the word to check it now lands with the sound.
If a whole phrase is in the wrong place on screen, move its group null instead. The full reference is in How to adjust caption timing and layout after generating.
If you generate again, the caption layers are rebuilt from the transcript, so keyframe and marker tweaks made by hand are replaced. Settle the look first, then do your timing fine-tuning last.
Karaoke captions in minutes
Active Highlight is included in every Captyne plan, and offline transcription is unlimited.
See Plans & Pricing →FAQ
How do I make karaoke captions in After Effects?
Transcribe your clip with Captyne, choose a reveal mode that keeps the whole phrase on screen (Group All At Once is the classic look), switch on Enable Active Highlight on the Preview tab, style the lit word, and click Generate Captions. Each word lights up as it's spoken.
Why doesn't Active Highlight do anything?
Check your Reveal Mode. AH has no effect in Single Word mode, because only one word is on screen at a time. Switch to Group All At Once, Cumulative Words or Cumulative Lines.
Can I use karaoke highlighting on song lyrics?
Yes, as long as the vocals are clear. Mute or lower the music while transcribing if you have a separate vocal track, and check the timing carefully in Review Transcript, since sung words are often stretched.
What's the difference between word by word captions and karaoke captions?
Word-by-word captions usually make words appear one at a time (Cumulative Words or Single Word). Karaoke captions keep the phrase on screen and highlight the spoken word. See Reveal modes explained for every option.