Glossary
What Are Karaoke Captions? Definition and Examples
Karaoke captions show all words in a phrase at once and highlight each individual word as it's spoken, like a karaoke screen.
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Definition
Karaoke captions are a caption style where the full phrase is shown on screen and each word is highlighted as it is spoken, similar to lyrics on a karaoke screen.
Full Explanation
Karaoke captions are a caption style derived from the karaoke music format. The full phrase or sentence appears on screen, and as the speaker (or singer) progresses through it, each word is highlighted, typically by changing color, scale, or background. This style requires word-level timestamps to work correctly. Karaoke captions are favored for: lyric videos (the original use case), educational content (viewers can read ahead while listening), podcast clips (caption density without rapid screen changes), and accessibility (consistent on-screen text is easier to read than fast pop-in/pop-out captions). On videocaptions.ai, karaoke captions are implemented under the 'Highlight' caption category.
Examples
- -A music video where lyrics light up in sync with the singer.
- -A podcast clip where the full sentence is visible and the spoken word glows yellow.
Related Terms
Why are they called karaoke captions?
The visual pattern, full lyrics displayed with each syllable highlighted as sung, was popularized by karaoke machines. The caption style borrows the metaphor.
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