The internet tells me it has already been reported and other people have the same issue:

I've seen this complained about in reddit over 7 months ago and would be surprised if there wasn't a fix yet. After any . like in Dr. or a middle initial the captions are breaking. is there no way around this?

There is an AI program called Descript. It takes video and automatically turns the audio into a written script. A user can then take the script and create captions. The issue is when the AI creates the captions, it will create a new caption at the period in the sentence. The problem is when abbreviated titles and name middle initials are in the script, the AI will create a break in the caption and separate names at the titles and middle initials. My thought is there should be code that can be put into the program that would override the break if a short key is activated at the period at titles and middle initials. Can you write code that could be put into the program?

ChatGPT

Certainly! For such a program, you'd likely want to implement post-processing logic on the AI-generated text. Given that "Descript" is proprietary software, I can provide a generic approach in JavaScript, which you can then adapt into the specific software environment of Descript if they offer a programmable API or SDK.

This solution will focus on the text processing part: analyzing the generated text and determining whether a period should represent the end of a caption or should be treated as part of an abbreviation or middle initial. If a user activates a shortcut key, we'll mark that period as "safe" and avoid breaking the caption there.

Here's a conceptual implementation:

javascript

Copy code

let overridePeriods = [];

document.addEventListener('keydown', (e) => {

// Check for the "command + ?" key combination

if (e.metaKey && e.key === '?') {

const position = getCurrentCursorPosition(); // This function should return the current cursor position in the script

overridePeriods.push(position);

}

});

function processCaptions(rawScript) {

const safeBreakPoints = getSafeBreakPoints(rawScript);

const captions = [];

let startIdx = 0;

for (let i = 0; i < rawScript.length; i++) {

if (rawScript[i] === '.' && !safeBreakPoints[i]) {

captions.push(rawScript.substring(startIdx, i + 1).trim());

startIdx = i + 1;

}

}

// Handle any remaining text

if (startIdx < rawScript.length) {

captions.push(rawScript.substring(startIdx).trim());

}

return captions;

}

function getSafeBreakPoints(script) {

// This function will return an array where a at index means the period at that position should not break the caption.

const breakPoints = Array(script.length).fill(false);

// Handling user-overridden periods:

overridePeriods.forEach(pos => {

if (script[pos] === '.') {

breakPoints[pos] = true;

}

});

// Handle common abbreviations and initials. Add more as needed.

const abbreviations = ['Mr.', 'Mrs.', 'Dr.', 'Ms.', 'St.', 'Ave.']; // Add more as needed

abbreviations.forEach(abbrev => {

let idx = script.indexOf(abbrev);

while (idx !== -1) {

breakPoints[idx + abbrev.length - 1] = true; // Marking the period in the abbreviation as safe

idx = script.indexOf(abbrev, idx + 1);

}

});

return breakPoints;

}

This is a high-level conceptual solution. Integrating this into Descript or any other proprietary software would require access to their development tools and a deep understanding of their internal data structures and functionalities.

Is there a way to use a period without it triggering a new paragraph or sentence, like when you use abbreviations? If I use "Mr." it breaks up the sentence in a way that looks bad, like:

It's been a long time, Mr.

Veil.

Omit the period as it causes captions to start as a new sentence. In order to avoid that you have to tediously remove the period. But that then lower cases the name. So then you have to correct that.

Much easier to just remove the period, and then in the few cases you want it, you can add it much easier than removing it now.