Subtitling has its own vocabulary, and Fluen Studio adds a few words of its own. This page defines the ones you will meet in the app, in the FAQ and in these guides. Jump to a letter, or read it through once and the rest of the Help Center will make more sense.
A
- AI Wordsmith also: Auto-Wordsmith
- The step that rewrites a translated subtitle when it runs too long for the time it is on screen. Some languages need more words than the source (English to German, for instance), so the AI shortens or rephrases the translation while keeping its meaning. It only applies to translations; captions stay verbatim.
- Aspect ratio
- The shape of the video: landscape (16:9), square (1:1) or portrait (9:16 and similar). Fluen adapts the default characters per line and font size to it, so vertical videos get shorter lines and smaller text than widescreen ones.
B
- Background also: plate, backing plate
- What sits behind the subtitle text. Fluen offers four styles: Letterbox (a solid box), Outline (a contour around each letter), Drop Shadow and None. You choose it in the Style panel of the editor. See Change the caption font.
- Burn-in also: burned-in, hardcoded, open captions
- Rendering the subtitles into the picture itself, so they are part of the video and cannot be switched off. Fluen exports a burned-in MP4 in 720p, 1080p, 4K or the original resolution. The opposite is a separate subtitle file (SRT, VTT and so on) that the player overlays. See Export video with burned-in subtitles.
C
- Captions vs. subtitles vs. translations
- In Fluen Studio, captions are the subtitles in the language spoken in the file (the source language). Translations are the tracks in other languages. Subtitles is the general word for both. The broader distinction between closed captions and subtitles is explained in this article.
- Characters per line CPL
- The maximum number of characters allowed on one subtitle line, including spaces and punctuation. The default depends on the language and the aspect ratio: 42 for English on a landscape video, fewer for portrait videos and for languages with denser scripts. You can change it on the upload screen, in the editor's Layout panel, and per language in Workspace Settings. See Font size and characters per line.
- Characters per second CPS, reading speed
- How fast a viewer has to read a subtitle: its length in characters divided by the time it stays on screen. Every cue in the editor shows its CPS; on translation tracks a warning appears when a cue is above the comfortable limit for that language (20 for most languages).
- Credit minute also: minute, credit
- The billing unit. Each minute of subtitles produced costs one credit minute: once for the captions and once for every translation language. Files are rounded to the nearest whole minute. See How Fluen pricing works.
- Cue also: subtitle, segment, block
- One subtitle: a start time, an end time and one or two lines of text. A track is a list of cues. In the editor each row of the list is a cue, and each highlighted region on the waveform is the same cue's timing.
D
- Dash marker
- One of the three ways to show speakers: a dash at the start of the cue each time the speaker changes, without naming anyone. The others are named speaker labels and no markers at all.
- Diarization also: speaker detection, speaker identification
- Working out who is speaking when, and assigning each cue to the right person. See Speaker identification.
E
- Engine also: AI transcription provider, segmentation engine
- The model that does a particular job. The transcription provider turns speech into text; the segmentation engine turns that text into well-timed, well-split cues. Both default to Auto, which picks the best option for the file, and both can be set in Workspace Settings. Our comparisons of the transcription engines and the segmentation engines go into detail.
- Expired media also: archived
- A media whose video or audio file has been removed from our servers after the retention period of your plan (30 days on Free, 90 days on Premium). The entry stays in your library and its subtitle tracks can still be exported; the editor preview and new exports of the video are no longer possible.
- Export
- Getting your work out of Fluen. There are three kinds: Video with Subtitles (a burned-in MP4), Subtitles File (SRT, WebVTT, TTML, SSA, iTunes Timed Text, SubViewer or EBU STL) and Text Transcript (Word, PDF or plain text).
G
- Glossary
- A list of terms, per workspace, with the spelling you want in captions and the translation you want in each language: names, brands, acronyms, product names. It is applied automatically to every file processed after you add the entry. See Set up a custom glossary.
L
- Layout
- How the text of a track is split into cues and lines: the characters per line and the maximum lines per cue. The editor's Layout panel lets you change both for an existing track, which triggers a reprocessing.
- Lines per cue also: max lines per caption, LPC
- Whether a cue may use one line or two. Two is the usual choice; one keeps captions compact on vertical videos or when the picture matters more.
M
- Media
- An uploaded video or audio file together with everything attached to it: its caption track, its translation tracks, its style and its exports. Your library is a list of media.
- Multi-language audio
- An upload option for files in which more than one language is spoken. It tells the transcription to expect switching between languages instead of forcing everything into the source language.
- My Exports
- The page, in the left sidebar, where burned-in video exports are listed and downloaded. Exported videos are kept for 90 days.
O
- Overflow indicator
- The red outline and tint the editor paints on the part of a subtitle that falls outside the video frame. It means the text is too wide for its position or size and will be cut off in a burned-in export. Fix it by lowering the characters per line, reducing the font size or moving the caption.
P
- Post-editing also: review, Pending Review
- Checking and correcting a track by hand after the AI has produced it. With post-editing on, the workflow pauses after transcription (and, optionally, after translation) and the track waits in Pending Review until you click Complete in the editor. It can be on or off per upload, and by default per workspace.
- Preset style preset
- A ready-made combination of font, colour, background and opacity: Classic, Clean, Broadcast, Bold, Cinematic or Pop. Presets change the look, never the layout or the font size.
R
- Reprocessing
- Regenerating a track without uploading the file again. Layout reprocessing re-splits the existing text with new line settings in seconds; the Troubleshoot menu can also rerun a track with a different AI engine once. Neither costs credits, and both overwrite manual edits. See Reprocess a track with new settings.
- Review link also: share link, public link
- A read-only web page for one track (or all language versions of a media) that anyone with the link can open for 72 hours. Reviewers can watch and read, not edit or download. See Share a track for review.
S
- Safe zone Social Media Safe Zone
- On portrait videos, a guide line at three quarters of the height that keeps captions clear of the buttons and text that social apps draw over the bottom of the screen. Captions snap to it when you drag them; the Always bottom setting in Workspace Settings turns it off.
- Segmentation also: auto-segmentation
- Turning a raw transcript into cues: deciding where each subtitle starts and ends and where the line breaks go. Fluen does this the way a professional subtitler would, following the grammar of each language, so lines do not break between an article and its noun or a first name and a surname.
- Source language / target language
- The source language is the one spoken in the file; the captions are in it. Target languages are the ones you translate into.
- Speaker labels
- Named speakers shown at the start of each cue in
[Speaker Name]format. In the editor each speaker has a colour so you can rename or reassign quickly; the colour is only there, exports use the bracketed name. - Style
- The look of a track's subtitles: font, size, text colour, background and opacity, plus the position on the video. It is saved per track, used by the editor preview and the burned-in export, and can have a workspace default. Subtitle files such as SRT carry no style.
T
- Timestamp offset
- An export option that shifts every cue by a fixed amount of time, useful when the subtitles were made from a trimmed segment and must line up with a longer edit.
- Top-up minutes
- Extra credit minutes bought on top of a plan. They never expire and are used once the plan balance is empty. Buying them requires an active subscription.
- Track
- One language version of a media's subtitles. Every media has a caption track and can have any number of translation tracks. Each track has its own status, editor, style and exports.
- Turnaround time TAT
- How long processing takes from upload to finished track. As a rule of thumb, less than half the duration of the file; burned-in video exports take about a quarter to half of the duration on top.
W
- Waveform also: timeline
- The audio graph along the bottom of the editor. Each cue is highlighted on it; drag the edges of a highlight to change when the cue starts and ends.
- Workspace
- A container for media and the settings that apply to them: caption and translation defaults, subtitle limits, glossary, style and (on Team plans) members with their permissions. You can create several, one per client or project, from My Workspaces in the sidebar.