1.5 – Adding B-Roll and Customize Captions Lesson

Lesson Overview

This lesson focuses on two high-impact capabilities in Opus Clip AI: automatically adding B-roll and customizing captions. B-roll—supplemental footage that adds context to your main video—dramatically heightens the viewer experience, especially when original clips feel static or lack visual variety. With Opus Clip AI, even basic talking head videos can instantly become richer through relevant stock footage. The tool’s beta auto B-roll engine scans your content, identifies key themes using AI, and inserts context-appropriate visuals at suggested points. You’re never locked in; it’s simple to change, replace, or remove these clips to preserve your creative vision.

Captions also play a central role in modern video, especially for engagement on social platforms. This lesson demonstrates how to craft captions that are not just functional but visually appealing—covering everything from initial AI-generated summaries to nuanced styling options like text color, font selection, and animations (such as karaoke effect or pop-ups). By deepening your understanding of these features, you’ll be able to produce short-form videos that look polished and professional—no advanced editing skills required. Whether you’re updating marketing content, educational snippets, or personal projects, the ability to quickly improve both visuals and captions saves time and increases the appeal of your videos.

Who This Is For

If you want to create attention-grabbing short videos efficiently, this lesson will be useful. It’s designed for:

• Content creators seeking more dynamic video with less manual editing
• Marketers aiming to repurpose webinars or long-form footage for social media
• Educators looking to highlight or illustrate points in lecture videos
• Small business owners wanting polished, branded content
• Agencies producing client shorts at scale
• Anyone new to Opus Clip AI interested in shortcutting the editing process

Where This Fits in a Workflow

Adding B-roll and customizing captions usually takes place right after your initial video clip is ready but before final export. Think of this as the polishing stage—turning rough recordings into engaging, shareable videos with minimal effort. For instance, after trimming down a thought leadership interview, you might use auto B-roll to break up longer speeches and add visual variety. At the same time, tailored captions clarify spoken points, increase accessibility, and carry your branding. In a social media workflow, these features provide the finishing touches that hold attention as users scroll. If you’re batching content for your team or clients, being able to add, review, and adjust B-roll and captions quickly helps maintain consistency and speeds up delivery.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Traditionally, adding B-roll required searching for and syncing separate footage manually—a slow, sometimes costly process. Captioning was similar: either typing everything out, using transcription tools, then laboriously tweaking styling line by line. Opus Clip AI shifts these steps to automation. The auto B-roll feature offers intelligent suggestions based on your video’s content and keywords, pulling clips from royalty-free sources like Pexels or Shutterstock. You can then review the placement, preview matches, and swap them out—all without leaving the editor.

Caption customization has also become far more flexible. Instead of static, generic subtitles, you can style lines, adjust colors, fonts, and highlight specific keywords, all with a few clicks. The result: videos that look more professional, are easier to understand, and adhere to modern social content standards. This saves time for solo creators as well as teams, eliminates repetitive tasks, and ensures more consistent results across projects.

Practice Exercise

Take a short segment (30–60 seconds) of talking head video—this could be any clip where someone is speaking directly to camera.

1. Use Opus Clip AI’s auto B-roll feature to insert at least two pieces of B-roll over sections where the main footage feels visually repetitive.
2. Customize the captions by updating font, color, line count, and try out the karaoke highlight effect.
3. Play back the result and compare: Do the B-roll clips feel relevant? Are the captions clear and visually appealing? Note which changes made the biggest difference in viewer engagement or clarity.

Course Context Recap

This lesson builds on your initial understanding of Opus Clip AI’s editing environment. Previously, you explored the basics of importing, trimming, and assembling your raw footage. Now, by layering in B-roll and advanced caption effects, you’re learning how to add polish and context that attract viewers on busy feeds. Next, we’ll cover templating, which allows you to save your favorite settings for future videos, ensuring fast, consistent results every time. Continue through the course to streamline your entire short-form video creation process.