Ship Your Pod

Guide

Your podcast clips need captions, and they need to be right

A Short is usually met with the sound off, so a clip without captions is a silent face for the first few seconds, and silence gets skipped. Good captions show the words actually said, one word or short phrase at a time, large enough to read on a phone and placed clear of the platform's own buttons. Adding them is the easy part; getting names and specialist terms right takes a spelled-out list written before the work starts.

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Why captions matter more on Shorts than anywhere else

A podcast is built for ears, but a vertical clip is met with eyes first. The viewer is often in a queue, on a train or in bed next to someone, and the audio stays off until something on screen earns the tap. Captions are the thing on screen. They let a viewer follow the point of the clip before deciding whether to turn the sound on at all.

Captions also carry the clip when the audio is imperfect. A guest who leans away from the mic, a room with echo, an accent the viewer is not used to: all of these are rescued by readable text. The caption track does as much work as the audio track in the first few seconds.

What good captions look like on a vertical clip

Good captions are short. One to four words on screen at a time, moving with the speaker, is far easier to read at phone size than a full sentence sitting in a block. Word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase timing also matches the rhythm of speech, so the viewer's eye and ear stay in step.

Keep the text in the middle third of the frame, above the description area and below the top edge. Platforms lay their own buttons, handles and sound names over the bottom and right side of the video, so anything you put there gets covered. Use a bold, plain typeface with a strong outline or background so it reads over any shirt or wall color.

Captions should be the words actually said

Resist the urge to tidy up what your guest said. Captions that paraphrase, shorten or 'fix' grammar fall out of sync with the audio the moment the viewer turns the sound on, and that mismatch feels wrong even when a viewer cannot say why. The caption should show the exact spoken words, minus the trimmed dead air and filler.

Trimming is the one exception. If an 'um' or a false start has been cut from the clip, it should be cut from the captions too, because the caption follows the edited audio. The raw recording is irrelevant once the clip exists; the text matches whatever a viewer will actually hear.

Where captions go wrong: names and specialist terms

Everyday speech is easy to caption. Your guest's surname, your co-host's unusual first name, the name of a product, a drug, a town, an organization or a bit of jargon from your field is where captions go wrong, and a wrong name on screen is the mistake viewers notice and screenshot. A guest who sees their own name misspelled in your clip is a guest who may not share it.

The fix is boring and reliable: keep a written list. Every proper noun and every term that would stump a stranger goes on it, spelled exactly as it should appear. Hand that list over before anything is captioned. On Ship Your Pod that list lives under Settings > Spelling, and it applies to captions, hooks and titles from the next episode you send. For a one-off guest, the 'Anything we should know?' box on the episode form does the same job for that episode only.

How to check captions before you post

Watch every clip once with the sound off and once with it on. The silent pass tells you whether the clip makes sense from the text alone and whether the type is readable at arm's length. The sound-on pass catches timing drift and any word that does not match what was said.

Pay extra attention to the first three seconds and to any line you would quote in the post text. If a word is wrong, fix the word in the clip itself; a correction in the comments reaches almost nobody who saw the error. On a Ship Your Pod clip, 'Change this' takes a plain request like 'fix the spelling of the guest's surname in this clip' and sends back a corrected version; add the name to Settings > Spelling at the same time so the next episode gets it right from the start.

Caption style: pick one and keep it

A show is recognizable by its captions as much as its logo. Choose a typeface, a color scheme and a highlight behavior once, then use it on every clip. Viewers who liked one Short should be able to tell a second one is yours before they see the handle. Changing style week to week makes a channel look like a reupload account.

Loud effects earn attention once and then wear thin. A single highlight color on the word being spoken is plenty. Avoid animations that bounce or spin the text; they make reading harder, and reading is the whole job of a caption. If your service has a choice of caption styles, pick the one that matches your show's tone and leave it there.

Where Ship Your Pod fits

If the editing is the part that keeps you from posting, send the episode instead. 8 to 15 Shorts come back within a day (same day on Pro), captioned, scored and ranked best first, with teasers, thumbnails from real frames, and the title, description and chapters. You post them yourself, full quality, no watermark. Pro is $149 a month for 12 episodes, 15 Shorts each, plus the Facebook cuts, the newsletter and the article. Starter is $59 a month for 4 episodes. The price goes down every month you stay. Month to month, cancel any time. Pro has a 14-day free trial for your first episode.

Pro: up to 180 Shorts, 36 teasers, 60 thumbnails and 24 Facebook cuts a month (12 episodes, 15 Shorts from each). Starter: up to 32 Shorts, 8 teasers and 12 thumbnails a month (4 episodes, 8 Shorts from each).

Open a document right now and write down every name and term your show uses, spelled the way it should appear on screen, then put that list wherever your captions come from before the next episode goes in.

Questions

Do captions on Shorts really matter if the show is audio-first?

Yes. The clip is a short piece of video met with the sound off, and the text is what gives a stranger a reason to stop. The audio matters once they have stopped.

Should captions include every 'um' and false start?

No. Captions follow the edited audio, so if a filler word has been trimmed from the clip it should be absent from the text too. What remains in the audio should remain word for word on screen.

How do I stop a guest's name being misspelled in captions?

Write it down before the episode goes in. Keep a running spelling list of names and terms, and add any one-off guest to the notes for that episode. A wrong name is the error viewers notice most.

Can I label who is speaking in the captions?

Speaker labels are rarely worth the screen space on a vertical clip. The framing already follows whoever is talking, and a split screen when two people trade lines shows who said what without extra text. Keep the captions to the words themselves.

What does Ship Your Pod cost?

Pro is $149 a month for 12 episodes, 15 Shorts each, plus the Facebook cuts, the newsletter and the article. Starter is $59 a month for 4 episodes. The price goes down every month you stay. Month to month, cancel any time. Pro has a 14-day free trial for your first episode. Pro: up to 180 Shorts, 36 teasers, 60 thumbnails and 24 Facebook cuts a month (12 episodes, 15 Shorts from each). Starter: up to 32 Shorts, 8 teasers and 12 thumbnails a month (4 episodes, 8 Shorts from each).

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Last updated 2026-10-14.