I am editing three one hour videos. Each needs to have a caption added below the video. The first video is completed with fifty captions added as individual title clips and placed at correspondingly named guides. Each title clip had to have the text positioned manually. The positioning controls were a great help, but it was tedious.

The second video has 125 captions. The prospect of adjusting each is daunting. I thought perhaps I could use the title template feature. However, as others have noted, there is no way of automatically centering the text of each caption built with the template. Put the "%s" near the bottom center, and instead of center aligning the caption of each instance, it starts each caption at the center of the screen. In addition, instance title layouts cannot be edited, only the template.

Here is a clumsy workaround that uses a single caption layout:

1. Create a title clip with dummy text extending all the way across the bottom of the screen and marked as both centered and center aligned. (This is needed because sometimes when you later try to edit text, it wraps additional text to the width of the original box.)

2. Save this clip with the .kdenlivetitle extension (I use "Base.kdenlivetitle").

3. Choose Add Clip (not Add Title Clip or Add Template Title), and add as many copies as you need to the Project Tree. (They will all have the same name.)

4. Each copy will have the same layout as your original. Its text can be replaced with a real caption.

Unfortunately, keeping track of these clips is a pain. Each must be renamed to match its caption. Furthermore, since every one is a distinct title, and not an instance of a template, woe to you, if you decide to change the format of all of your captions.

Unless you have images or multiple text boxes, if you are only creating subtitles, the manual method I use seems to be the fastest and least stressful:

1. Insert guides at every point on the timeline where you want to introduce a new caption, and label each guide with the desired text for the caption.

2. Prepare a title clip with the desired text font, size, color etc., and save it. The title clip editor remembers the last font settings you have used.

3. Create a shortcut to Add Title Clip (^T for me).

For each caption:

1. Double click the guide label on the timeline.
2. ^C
3. {Enter}
4. ^T to open a new title clip.
5. Left-click the checkered background anywhere.
6. ^V to paste the text.
7. Left-click align-to-center horizontally button.
8. Left-click align-to-bottom-of-screen button.
9. Left-click outside the text box to leave text edit mode.
10. Left-click inside the text box to select text box.
11. {uparrow} the number of times needed to put the caption where you want it.
({Ctrl}{uparrow} will move up one half a grid space at a time.)
12. {Enter}
The new caption title will appear in the project tree as "Title clip", highlighted. You may have to scroll the project tree to find it.
13. Place the cursor to the immediate right of the text "Title clip", and double click to select that text. (This is tricky. Occasionally, it may open the title edit box instead. Close the box. The second try should work.)
14. ^V to replace that text with your caption.
15. {Enter>}
16. Drag the clip to the corresponding guide on the time line.
17. Drag the right edge of the clip so that it snaps to the next guide.

You're done. Repeat for each caption.
This takes far less time to do than to read about. One of its virtues is that it avoids having to type the text of your caption again once you have it as a label for your guide.

It would be great to be able to automate this, but until then....

Having some kind of srt import would be really nice.

Not being able to insert scrolling captions, or subtitles is one of the major downsides of Kdenlive compared to Windows Movie Maker. Wish this would be resolved. We really need the ability to scroll captions and other effects regarding captioning.

There are currently two entries in Kdenlive Mantis for proper subtitling features.

http://www.kdenlive.org/mantis/view.php?id=1887

http://www.kdenlive.org/mantis/view.php?id=400

With one person even going so far to come up with mock ups.

http://www.project-insanity.org/2012/02/mockups-for-kdenlive-subtitle-editor/comment-page-1/#comment-972

Can we get some more support on these entries so that this feature appears in a version of Kdenlive sooner rather than later. Manually creating, and positioning titles for an entire video creates a lot of extra work.