Align, Hide, Show, or Remove Captions using the STAMP Add-in in PowerPoint 2016, 2013, and 2010 for Windows

The STAMP add-in for PowerPoint is a free download from Microsoft that lets you add captions to media such as movie clips inserted in your slides. When installed, the STAMP add-in creates new buttons in the Video Tools Playback tab of the Ribbon in PowerPoint, within the Captions group of the Video Tools Playback tab, There are several options in this group that can be helpful while working with your existing captions (these can be seen in Figure 1 below).


Figure 1: Align Captions button

These options are:

1. Align Captions
2. Hide
3. Show
4. Remove
5. Autostart Video
6. Export
7. Options

In this tutorial, you will learn more about these options.

Align Captions

If you have moved or resized the video clip since you added captions, you can easily re-align the captions to the new video dimensions. Additionally you can align captions to either the clip or the slide:

1. Select the video which has been moved or resized. Figure 2 shows the selected resized video.
   
   
   Figure 2: Selected resized video
2. Now locate the Captions group within the Video Tools Playback tab, and click the Align Captions button, as shown in Figure 1 (earlier on this page).
3. This resizes the span of the captions according to the new video clip dimensions, as shown in Figure 3.
   
   
   Figure 3: Captions resized

Align Captions to Video or Slide?

While the default behavior of the Align Captions button is to align subtitles to the bottom of your clip, you can also align to the bottom of the slide. To do so, click the downward pointing arrow in the lower half of the Align Captions button to bring up a dropdown with both options (see Figure 4 below).


Figure 4: Align to the bottom of the slide is also an option

Hide

To hide captions, first select the video, and then click the Hide button. Hiding captions does not remove the captions or even the video clip from the presentation.

Show

To display captions that you have previously hidden, select the video, and then click the Show button. Do note that the Show button will be grayed out until you actually hide any captions.

Remove

Select the video which has captions added. Then click the Remove button. This opens the Delete Captions warning window asking if you want to remove all the captions permanently from the selected media. Click Yes to proceed.


Figure 5: Delete Captions window

Autostart Video

Changes the start event of your video from On Click to Automatically. Your video with captions will now play automatically when you play the slide, or after another animation event on the same slide (if animations exist on the slide).

Export

Exports your subtitles to a TTML file. To learn more about TTML files, explore our TTML XML Files for the STAMP Add-in tutorial.

Options

Brings up the STAMP Options dialog box that allows you to fine-tune settings for the STAMP add-in, as shown in Figure 6, below. You can choose default caption styles for font, font size, font formatting, the transparency and fade durations for captions, timing accuracy, and more.

Also, with the STAMP add-in installed, you may see the Caption Editor window each time you insert a media clip on your slide. You can turn off this behavior, or change the behavior to import captions rather than creating them manually.


Figure 6: STAMP Options