How to create dynamic subtitles in After Effects?

In this video tutorial you will learn how to create dynamic subtitles in After Effects, that you can quickly reuse for any future project.

0:00 - Intro
0:35 - Setting up the comp
1:11 - Creating subtitles text layer
3:04 - Adding a dynamic box behind subtitles
8:21 - Multi line setup
10:55 - Closing statement

Expression on box size:
[textWidth, textHeight]

Expression on text anchor:

[0, yPos]

[YemiDavis]

This is the best, most straight foreward subtitle tutorial I've come across! Great work!!

[damiengreen]

Great tutorial, works so well. before I was resizing boxes manually

[a.carsandas]

took me a while but worth it in the end, this tutorial saves me. Thank you sm ;D

[zakiroyhan]

Thank you so much!! it's more saving time using expression comparing to animating manually.

[alotenorio]

El mejor tutorial que he visto para generar subtítulos en After Effects ^^

[rean]

Thank you so much sir! I've been finding it for so long.

[noyklas]

Thank you! Straight forward end well explained! :)

[heywazup_aep]

Thanks for the tutorial, I'll try this.

[SekiFayt]

Thank you so much. This is exactly what I needed! T^T

[turkmen_hits]

thank you very much broo you really helped))

[BlizeBrze]

THANKS YOU YOU SAVE MY HEAVY LIFE, YOU ARE SUPERMAN !!!

[tilius.xyz_]

Hey, thanks a lot, nice and easy tutorial, tho I'm using it for an animated interface. I have animated text inside a button, which needs a minimum rectangle size. Could you think of a solution?

[noshiAEP]

Very helpful expression! The problem I'm currently facing is that when you move the text and box in the timeline, the timing of the box gets completely messed up for me and the box moves inbetween the text hold keyframes for some reason. I tried precomposing text and the box to move it but that doesnt fix the problem.
I don't really know much about expressions but maybe it has to do with the .sourceRectAtTime command?
Edit: I just found a workaround to not move the layers themselves, but dragging out the back and pulling in the front and then moving the keyframes to the correct timing. That kinda fixes it.

[nickdanvers]

If this isn't working for you, here's something that helped me:
Go to your background subtitle box layer, and make sure that every Scale or Size is set to 1920x1080, or 100%

[richochet]

Thank you, so well done. Subbed)

How do I account for the parts of text that are below the centre like in "g" etc? They seem to make it not quite centred if you see what I mean.

[deliberatevideo]

When I tried to follow you exactly typing the expression by hand it didn't work, so I checked the description and copied the one you provided. It worked! Not sure what I was missing in mine!

[antonhapunkt]

Great tutorial! So far, the only "problem" I'm facing is that the subtitles-box even shows a little square when the text is empty (includes no letters).. So when you want to have a "break" for a moment with the subtitles you would have to work around it.. (I know it's because of the additional space which is added to the size of the letters/text). I'm sure there is a way through expressions to tell it not to show a box whenever the text remains empty... unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with expressions.

[JaiShreeRam_]

Hey, Just in case anyone did not know, Textbox 2 plugin is paid but can save you alot of time with many customizations.

[abdelazizmuhammed]

thx fot the tut mate, is there an expression that makes the rectangle follows the text word by word I asked chat gpt for this but I keep getting errors please let me know if that's possible thanks again

[shriefallam]

What if I want to make a background rectangle to go along with the typewriter effect on words?