Karaoke highlight
Karaoke captions that light up on the exact word.
The whole line stays readable while each word highlights as it’s spoken. Four highlight behaviours, true word-level timing, free to try.
Karaoke captions keep the whole subtitle line on screen and mark only the word being spoken right now, so a viewer can read ahead while still tracking the speaker exactly. LumaCaption drives the highlight from real word-level timestamps and offers four highlight behaviours — colour, a filled pill, a scale pop and an underline.
Karaoke captions keep the full line on screen and mark the word being said right now. It’s the most unforgiving caption style there is — with a static subtitle block, a timing error of half a second is invisible; with a karaoke highlight, it’s visible on every single word. That precision is also why it feels alive: the viewer can read ahead for context and still know exactly where the speaker is in the sentence.
LumaCaption times captions at the word level, which is what makes this possible at all. From there it’s a question of how you want the highlight to behave — a clean colour swap on the active word, a filled pill that travels along the line, a scale that pops the word forward, or a rule underlining it. Pick the behaviour, set the two colours, and check it against your audio. Your video is never uploaded to do it.
Four highlight behaviours
A colour wipe that sweeps through each word as it’s said; a full-word colour swap on the active word; a scale pop that pushes it forward; or a background pill that travels along the line. Karaoke, Pulse, Box, Marker and Sticker each take a different route.
Word-level timing, not line-level
This is the honest technical line. A tool that only knows when a line starts and ends cannot highlight the third word of that line — it has nothing to highlight it on. Every word here carries its own start and end.
Context and position at once
Unlike one-word-at-a-time captions, the whole line stays visible, so viewers get the shape of the sentence while the highlight keeps them anchored to your delivery.
Your two colours
Set the resting colour and the highlight colour to match your brand or your track artwork, and drag the block clear of the platform UI.
The four highlight behaviours
What moves along the line is a choice, and it changes the feel far more than the colours do. All four run off the same word timings, so switching between them is instant and costs nothing.
- Colour
- The active word simply changes colour and changes back. The quietest option and the one that survives the smallest phone screens.
- Filled pill
- A rounded block sits behind the active word. On presets with glide enabled the block travels from the previous word rather than cutting, which is the most identifiable karaoke motion there is.
- Scale
- The active word grows slightly and settles back. Reads as emphasis rather than tracking — good when the line is short.
- Underline
- A rule under the active word only. The most restrained, and the one that stays legible under a caption already carrying a lot of colour.
Why karaoke captions punish bad timing
With a static subtitle block, a timing error of half a second is invisible — the line was already on screen and stays there. With a karaoke highlight, that same error is visible on **every single word**, because the viewer is watching a marker that is supposed to be synchronised to a voice they can hear. Karaoke is the caption style that exposes the quality of the underlying transcription.
This is why line-level timing divided evenly across words does not work here, even though it passes for a static caption. LumaCaption takes word-level timestamps from the speech model, so pauses stay pauses and a stressed word holds its own length.
Two colours, and the contrast that has to hold
A karaoke line asks a viewer to read the inactive words and notice the active one, which means both states have to be legible against the footage — not just the highlighted one. The common failure is a bright accent on the active word and a dim grey on the rest, which looks correct on a laptop and disappears over sunlit footage on a phone.
Keep the inactive colour at full legibility and let the *highlight* be the difference. LumaCaption measures the footage behind the caption and applies exactly enough wash to hold a 3:1 contrast ratio, so the resting state does not have to be dimmed to make the highlight visible.
Karaoke highlight vs word-by-word reveal
| Karaoke highlight | Word-by-word reveal | |
|---|---|---|
| Words on screen | The whole line | Only what has been said |
| Viewer can read ahead | Yes | No |
| Best for | Lyrics, tutorials, language learning | Hooks, talking heads, fast delivery |
| Timing errors | Visible on every word | Visible at each new word |
| Space used | Full line — needs room | Minimal |
How it works
Upload the clip
A talking head, a voiceover, or a track with vocals. English, Hindi and Hinglish, each tuned end-to-end rather than inherited.
Pick a highlight behaviour
Try Karaoke for the sweep, Pulse for the pop, Box or Sticker for a travelling pill, Marker for a highlighter stroke. Switching between them costs nothing.
Check the sync, then export
Scrub through and retime any word that lands early or late, or fix a misheard lyric by typing over it. Export is free and unlimited on every plan.
Common questions
What’s the difference between karaoke captions and normal subtitles?
Normal subtitles swap a whole line in and out — you read the line, it disappears, the next one arrives. Karaoke captions hold the line in place and move a highlight across it word by word, so the text and the voice stay locked together. It’s a retention device as much as a readability one: something on screen is always changing.
Why can’t my usual editor do this?
Most auto-caption features produce line-level timings — a start and end per caption block. That’s enough to show a line at the right moment and nothing more. Highlighting the word being spoken needs a timestamp per word, which has to come out of the transcription step. If a tool doesn’t produce word timings, no amount of styling will get you karaoke.
Can I use this to make a lyric video?
For vocal sections, yes — this is the same mechanic lyric videos use, and the highlight styles work well against a static background or a performance clip. Be realistic about the limits: it captions what is sung or said, so instrumental passages have nothing to transcribe, and anything a vocal-heavy mix garbles you’ll want to correct in the transcript. It’s a strong lyric-caption approach, not a full lyric-video suite.
What does it cost?
The free plan includes all 290+ styles, 20 minutes of Candy Lite plus 5 minutes of premium Candy Ultra transcription a month, 2 minutes max per video, and free unlimited 1080p exports with no watermark. Creator is ₹199/month (₹166 billed annually) for 30-minute videos and 4K; Pro is ₹999/month (₹832 billed annually) for 90-minute videos.
