What this subtitle generator does
It writes down what's said in your video and times every word. Those words are then grouped into subtitle lines: up to about 42 characters and 5 seconds each, broken at pauses and full stops rather than mid-phrase. Vertical videos get shorter lines of about 22 characters, and you can switch between the two with the Short lines for Reels & TikTok checkbox on the Style tab.
The speech model is Whisper large-v3 turbo, OpenAI's open-source recognizer, running on Groq. It detects the language by itself, or you can pick one of 22 from the Spoken language menu before you drop the file in. Subtitles come out in the language that's spoken.
Three ways to use the subtitles
As a subtitle file
Download an .srt or .vtt and upload it next to your video on YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn or a course platform. Viewers can switch the subtitles on or off. Not sure which format? Our guide to SRT files explains the difference.
Burned into the video
Press Render video on the Export tab and your browser encodes a copy with the subtitles drawn onto the picture. This is what you want for TikTok, Instagram and anywhere else that autoplays with the sound off. If you already have an SRT and only need it on the video, use the burn-in tool.
As plain text
Export TXT for a transcript, show notes, a blog post or a quote you want to pull out.
Fixing subtitles before you export
Treat automatic subtitles as a first draft. The caption list next to the video handles the usual fixes:
- Click a line and retype it. The video jumps to that moment so you can hear what was said.
- Type a new start or end time (in seconds) when a line shows up early or hangs on screen too long.
- Put the cursor where a long line should break and press Split, or press Merge to join a line with the next one.
- Press Import SRT above the list to replace the draft with a subtitle file you already have.
If you only have a few minutes, spend them on proper nouns and figures. That's where the draft is most often wrong.
Subtitle styles
Four presets. After picking one you can change the font (two to choose from), size, text, highlight and outline colors, and position:
| Style | Looks like | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Karaoke | White text, a yellow box moves onto each word as it's spoken | Short-form social video |
| Classic | White text with a dark outline, no highlight | Films, interviews, tutorials |
| Boxed | Text on a dark band, the spoken word turns yellow | Busy or bright footage |
| Bold pop | Large uppercase type placed higher in the frame, the spoken word turns yellow | Vertical clips and talking heads |
Is a free subtitle generator good enough?
For most videos, yes. When you compare plans, look at what a subscription adds on top of transcription. It's usually things like brand kits, team seats and cloud storage. If all you need is accurate subtitles on one video, you can add subtitles to a video free here: no account, no watermark, nothing to install.
A human captioner still makes sense for legal or medical content, broadcast work that has to meet FCC caption rules, or audio with a lot of crosstalk. Even then, correcting an automatic draft beats typing from nothing.
If you want styled captions for social clips rather than a subtitle file, the auto caption generator on our homepage runs the same engine but opens on the style options. For other routes, such as YouTube Studio, CapCut or Premiere, read how to add subtitles to a video.