An alternative to Fusion caption templates

Caption templates and plugins — Magic Subtitles, Snap Captions, the animated subtitle presets built into Resolve 20 — are the quickest way to get moving captions: pick a style, apply it, done. They are the right choice for many videos. This page is about the cases where they get in the way, and what ROKLIM does differently.

Where templates get in the way

• One word needs to be different. Bigger, a different colour, moved off a face, its own animation. A template decides the look for the whole line or track; going beyond its options means fighting it.
• The layout is part of the design. Words stacked in rows of different sizes, placed around the speaker — not a line of text at the bottom.
• Late changes. A new font or a bigger size for the whole video, after everything is placed.
• A consistent series. Thirty videos for one client with exactly the same look.

What ROKLIM does instead

Every word is an ordinary Text+ clip on your timeline — the same kind of clip you would make by hand. ROKLIM only automates making and arranging them:

• Layout turns the subtitles into one clip per word, in groups and rows that fit the zone you choose, and colours the rows.
• Animation puts a Fusion .setting macro on each clip by its colour — ROKLIM's presets or your own macros.
• Font, size and spacing changes are done for the whole range at once and the words re-flow (how).
• A finished group can be saved as a Premade layout and applied to any other group.

ROKLIM is a separate app. It installs no Fusion templates and no plugins into Resolve, and talks to Resolve through its scripting API. The result on the timeline stays ordinary clips that anyone can open and edit in Resolve, with or without ROKLIM.

What stays the same

• The animation is still Fusion — a macro inside each Text+ clip. ROKLIM places it for you; it does not replace Fusion.
• You need subtitles first: ROKLIM makes them from the audio, or use Resolve Studio's Create Subtitles from Audio or any SRT.

When a template is still the better choice

• A simple caption style you never adjust word by word.

A side-by-side overview of the tools: ROKLIM compared with other caption tools.