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Give it your talking-head, interview or podcast clip. You get captions timed to the words, designed cards (titles, quotes, numbers, lower thirds), or a tighter cut with the long pauses removed. A verbatim rail, an embedded climax word, kinetic emphasis, a lower third and a pull-quote. The footage underneath is never re-edited — the overlays carry all of it.

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Make it

Add the clip in Make something and say what you want:
Like the captions in someone else’s video? Paste its link too and say “captions like this”. With your own agent instead of the app, start the message with /hyperframes.

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Ask for one of three things

  • Captions: the spoken words on screen, timed to the voice. A clean line under the speaker for most videos, or big words set behind the speaker for a cinematic look.
  • Designed cards: titles, pull-quotes, number callouts, lower thirds, or the speaker shrunk into a corner while a card holds, all synced to what’s said.
  • A tighter cut: remove long pauses or stretches you name. Ask for it first, then caption the cut, so the captions follow the final timing:
To reorder the story or pick the best moments from a long recording, describe the video you want as a custom video. Tell the agent any names or terms the transcript may miss, and where the speaker’s face and any on-screen text are, so graphics stay clear of them.

Practice it: Edit your own footage

Free 20-minute lesson with a short video, a quiz and a brief to try. A footage brief is the goal, where it plays, two or three edits and the exact title words.

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Prompts that work

Two words help: the rail is the line of captions that carries the spoken words; an embed is one big word set behind the speaker for the strongest moment.
Add captions to ./interview.mp4. Clean verbatim rail carrying the spoken words, readable lower-third. Promote the single hardest-hitting word to an embed behind the speaker; highlight one key word in each rail line. Keep the source aspect ratio. Footage stays untouched.
Made from the prompt above on generated presenter footage: one embed behind the speaker, everything else on the rail. The rail carries most of the text; an embed is the scarce, earned peak — one big word matted behind the subject at the climax, never every line. Embedding the whole transcript is the most common mistake.

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Designed cards

Package ./founder-clip.mp4 with designed graphic overlay cards synced to the transcript. 9:16 portrait, warm-paper style. Open with a fullscreen kicker + title hook, drop a lower-third when she names the company, a data callout card counting up the “200+ teams / $1.2M ARR” stat, and a pull-quote card for the strongest line. Speaker stays full-bleed under the cards; shrink her into a corner PiP while the data card holds. The clip plays untouched underneath.
You describe the cards — their content, timing, and how the speaker shares the canvas with them (full-bleed, split, PiP, or glass overlay). The agent designs and writes each card; there’s no fixed archetype list, so the overlays follow what the transcript actually says.

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Say these when they matter

Look and tone (captions). Describe the look by content: explainer / interview / must-read words → a clean readable rail; poetic / social / cinematic → hero typography behind the speaker; hype → bolder, punchier type. Unsure → a clean rail: the words read and the scene stays safe. Ready-made caption styles are in the captions catalog. Verbatim rail vs climax embed. The rail is the default and carries most of the text. An embed is a promotion — one peak word matted behind the subject, scarce and spaced (roughly one per beat, never two co-visible, at most one apex). Tell the agent which lines earn the embed; leave the rest on the rail. Style, layout, and canvas (overlay cards). Name a style (warm paper, clinical, …), a layout (split / stack / PiP / overlay), and a canvas ratio. Matching the source ratio is the safe default, but you choose — 16:9 for desktop / YouTube, 9:16 for Reels / Shorts, 4:5 for feed. Keyword highlighting. On the caption rail, a punch word can carry an inline emphasis — an accent-color or active-word pop — without leaving the rail. Ask for “highlight the key word in each line” and it stays readable.

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Variants

Cinematic captions on ./poem.mp4 — no rail, lowercase-italic hero typography composited behind the speaker, words accumulating as a column. One apex word per thought, air between them. 4:5. Never grade the footage.
Dropping the rail and setting everything behind the speaker suits poetic / social / “cinematic” asks where mood beats strict readability, never on an explainer where the words must read.
Add verbatim captions to ./outdoor-vlog.mp4. It’s a bright daylight scene, so use near-black type printed onto the surface — not a light-on-bright look that washes out. Keep it a readable rail. 16:9.
Light, screen-blended type washes out over bright backdrops (brightness above ~180); dark, opaque type holds. Match the look to the scene.
Bring the energy on ./hype-clip.mp4 — I want the captions to hit hard: a stamped verbatim rail with a detonation apex. Rail carries the verbatim; the payoff line is the setpiece. 9:16.
Name the treatment — stamped type, a detonation on the payoff line — instead of “make it explode”. The a-roll is still never graded.
Recut ./analyst-interview.mp4 as a 16:9 explainer with a clinical style. Split layout: speaker on the right, data cards on the left. Cards for each claim — a count-up for the headline number, a swiss-grid comparison for the two options, a terminal-style callout for the technical bit. Auto-pace the card count for a 5-minute clip. Footage untouched.
Layout (split / stack / pip / overlay) sets how speaker and cards share the canvas; left unstated, card density follows the clip’s length — roughly one card every 12–20 seconds on a 5-minute clip.

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Common mistakes

Captioning before cutting. Captions are timed to the clip as it is. Cut first, then caption, or the captions drift off the words.
  • Avoid: add captions, then remove the pauses
  • Instead: remove the pauses, then add captions to the cut
Embedding every word. On a talking head the rail is the verbatim default; matting every caption behind the subject buries the words and spends the climax on nothing.
  • Avoid: composite every caption behind the speaker for a cinematic look (on an explainer)
  • Instead: verbatim rail; promote only the two payoff lines to an embed
Multi-subject clips. Text behind the speaker is matted against one person; two speakers or hard cuts make it flicker.
  • Avoid: caption this two-person podcast in one pass
  • Instead: split the clip per shot / per speaker first, then caption each — or use a single-subject cut.

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Review what matters

  • Names, product terms, and numbers are correct.
  • Captions follow the spoken words.
  • Graphics avoid faces and important parts of the footage.
  • The video works with sound and muted.
  • The final caption or graphic clears before the video ends.
Then change it: ask the agent for corrected words or timing, or move a caption by hand in the editor. To import corrected words from a transcript file, run hyperframes transcribe transcript.json --dir ./my-video. It replaces the full transcript in the existing captions and keeps the caption code around it.