Make the first three seconds readable without audio, caption every word accurately in both languages, keep text out of the platform’s interface, and still design the sound for people who turn it on.
A clinic’s waiting room. A majlis after dinner. A desk at ten in the morning. A bed at midnight. In all of these, someone is scrolling with the sound off, and your video is playing to them in silence. If the message lives in the voice-over, it has already been missed. Designing for the muted viewer is not an accessibility extra; it is how most of the audience will meet the work.
Assume silence. Design for sound.
Start from the muted version. Can a viewer tell what the video is about in the first three seconds from the picture and the text alone? Is the offer readable? Is the brand recognisable without the jingle? If the answer to any of these is no, the edit needs work before the music is chosen.
Then reward the people who do turn the sound on: a voice that adds warmth or detail, sound design that makes the product feel real, music that fits the brand’s motion. Sound should be a bonus layer, never the only one carrying the meaning.
Captions are not subtitles.
Captions reproduce the speech in the same language and include meaningful sounds: [phone rings], [laughter]. Subtitles translate the speech into another language. A bilingual audience in Oman often needs both: Arabic captions on an Arabic film, with English subtitles, or the reverse.
Burned-in text is seen everywhere, including when a platform’s own captions are off, but it cannot be switched or corrected later. Platform caption files can be edited and read by screen readers but depend on the viewer’s settings. For most business video, burn in the primary language and upload a caption file for the second.
Write captions like copy.
Captions are read, so write them to be read: short lines, one or two at a time, on screen long enough to finish. Keep names, prices and conditions exactly as spoken. Check that automatic captions have not turned a product name into something else; they often do, in both languages.
Arabic needs its own typographic care: a typeface designed for Arabic, line breaks that do not split a phrase awkwardly, and the same visual weight as the English rather than a smaller afterthought.
- One idea per caption; no more than two lines.
- High contrast on a consistent background strip or box.
- Timing that matches the speaker, not the beat of the music.
- A proofread in both languages by someone who did not edit the film.
Keep text out of the interface.
On a vertical video, the platform draws its own interface over the picture: the caption and username at the bottom, buttons down one side, a progress bar, sometimes a header. Anything you place in those areas is covered. Keep captions, logos and calls to action inside the clear central area, and check the current safe-zone template for each platform before export, because they change.
The demonstration below shows the idea. The exact margins vary by app and by phone; the habit of leaving them clear does not.
Sound still matters.
When the sound is on, mistakes are loud. License the music properly for every platform the film will appear on. Record voice-over in both languages with native speakers rather than translating one and hoping. Match the loudness across all your videos so a viewer does not get a shock moving from one to the next.
Sound design can carry what the picture cannot: the click of a lid, the hush of a showroom, the kitchen behind a dish. It is often the cheapest way to make a film feel expensive.
If the message only works with the sound on, the message only works for a minority.
Check before you post.
Watch the final export on a phone, muted, in the app it is made for, with the device set to Arabic and then to English. Read every caption against the audio. Look at the first frame as a still, because that is how it appears before it plays. Then, and only then, choose the music.
- Muted on a phone: is the offer clear in three seconds?
- Both language interfaces: is any text hidden by the app?
- Captions: are names, numbers and prices exactly right?
- Still frame: does the opening image work as a thumbnail?
- Sound on: is the loudness consistent and the music licensed?
FROM THINKING TO DOING
Let’s make videos that work in every setting.
We produce, caption and subtitle films for Oman’s bilingual audience, muted or not.
