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Expand & Compress

Expand and Compress rebalance the line shape of a caption event by redistributing words across its lines. They are quick-fix tools for events where the line distribution is uneven — for example, when one line is close to the character limit while another is very short, or when an event that should read as a two-liner has been formatted into a single long line.

Prerequisites​

  • A project is open with at least one Event Group.
  • One or more events are selected.
  • Expand: secondary toolbar; configurable keyboard shortcut.
  • Compress: secondary toolbar; configurable keyboard shortcut.

How Expand and Compress work​

Expand spreads the words of an event across more lines. It moves words from the end of the first line to the beginning of subsequent lines, effectively making the event taller while keeping the total word count the same. This is useful when a single-line event exceeds the maximum characters-per-line limit and needs to be broken into two lines, or when a two-line event is imbalanced and would read better with the load distributed more evenly.

Compress does the opposite — it consolidates lines by moving words upward, reducing the total line count where possible. This is useful when automatic formatting has introduced an unnecessary line break leaving a short orphan line, or when you want to collapse a multi-line event into fewer lines without losing any of its text.

Both operations respect the text as a flow of words and rebalance accordingly. They do not change the event's timing, position, style, or any other property — only the distribution of words across paragraph breaks within the event text.

When to use Expand and Compress​

Expand and Compress work best as a first pass after importing a transcript or running Auto Format when the line shapes are broadly correct but individual events have uneven distribution. Rather than manually repositioning a line break by hand, a single click to Expand or Compress often produces the correct result immediately.

For finer adjustments — moving a single word or a specific line to a different event — use Shift Words or Shift Lines instead.

All Expand and Compress operations are recorded in the undo history.

Troubleshooting​

The event does not change after clicking Expand or Compress​

If there is only one word in the event, or if expanding or compressing would produce a result identical to the current state, the operation will have no visible effect. This is expected behavior.

The resulting line distribution is not what was expected​

Expand and Compress use the current word boundaries within the event to calculate the new distribution. If the event text contains unusual formatting or empty paragraphs, the results may differ from what was expected. Use undo to revert and make manual adjustments if needed.

Source notes​

  • Components: src/components/toolbar/controls/Expand.svelte, src/components/toolbar/controls/Compress.svelte