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How to Add Subtitles to a Video in 3 Easy Steps

How to Add Subtitles to a Video in 3 Easy Steps

You’ve created an awesome video for your brand, and now the only thing left to do is to get noticed by everyone on social media.

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, it is, if you’re aware of the little details that can make your social media videos 2x more effective. One of the easily missed techniques is to add subtitles to a video.

Adding subtitles on a video can significantly impact how well your videos perform online, statistically, and by viewing experience.

Why Adding Subtitles to Your Video is a Must?

When looking for some statistical impact to emphasize just how big a difference subtitled videos made, here’s what we found out:

In short, if you add subtitles to a video, you’ll have a highly successful video at hand. The wider an audience you’re able to reach out to and interact with, the better ROIs you'll gain from even a single compelling video you’ve put out online.


Subtitles Vs. Captions - Is there a difference?

Captions and Subtitles are often synonymous (yes, even by Netflix). Both appear at the bottom of your screen but can vary by intent.

If you want to get into the specifics, here’s the difference:

  • Subtitles are often considered text translations for people who don’t speak the language used in your video (dialogue translations for film or educational videos)
  • Captions are transcriptions of the spoken part of a video that appears at the bottom of the screen in the same language as video.

How to Add Subtitles to a Video Online

Here are 3 ways to add captions on Typito.

Let’s look at it step by step

Step 1: Upload your video

Log into Typito if you already have an account. (You can get started directly and sign up for an account later.)

Choose the format based on the kind of content and the platform on which the video will be posted.

Choose your preferred format. You can also customize the format you need.

Once you've decided which format to use, you can upload your video.

Upload your media by dragging and dropping it or choose from your browser or drive

You can add files from your local storage by browsing or by dragging and dropping the file. Adding new material to an already-in-progress edit is possible.

Step 2: Add Subtitles to your Video- choose from 3 different ways

Next, click the Caption tab from the left panel. Choose a mode that best suits your needs.

Choose from 3 different ways to add subtitles to your video

Auto-Generate Subtitles

If you want to automatically generate subtitles, this is the easiest method that will cut down on both, time and effort. It's the quickest way to get subtitles on your video in a matter of minutes.

  • Click Auto-generate
  • Choose your subtitle language (in you need translated video subtitles)
  • Click Start - and your subtitles will be generated automatically.
How to Add Captions to Videos Online (Step-by-Step Guide)
Learn how to add captions to videos online without much hassle. You can choose multiple font styles and even generate captions/subtitles for your videos automatically using Typito’s smart speech to text feature.
Click here to see how you can automatically add subtitles to your video 

Add subtitles by uploading a SRT file

This is the best option for you if you already have a plain-text file with the subtitle  for your video and all you need to do is synchronize it with your video.

  • Click on "upload subtitle file." Or you can simply drag and drop your file.
  • Choose your subtitle language (in you need translated subtitles)
  • Click Start - and your SRT file will be automatically synced with your video.
Upload the subtitle file by dragging and dropping it or choose from your computer.

Manually add subtitles

This method works best for short videos, where you can just manually type out the captions you want.

  • Choose "Add manually"
  • Once you choose this option, you will be directed to a tab where you can choose the language and theme of your subtitles
  • Type to add subtitles at each timestamped interval of your video

You can also adjust the duration of the captions on the timeline itself by moving the handle bars.

Type in the caption and adjust the duration by moving the handle bars.

Your subtitles will be visible on both, the clip and in the left panel. If you want to be sure your video is flawless, watch it again and correct any errors you see. You can make adjustments directly on the video or from the left panel.

Step 3: Style your subtitles

Select "Style" from the left panel. Typito gives you full control over the visual appearance of your captions, allowing you to choose everything from the font and style to the size and color scheme, and even the amount of white space between the words.

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Pro-Tip
If your video has contrasting colors that might hinder your text subtitles’ visibility, you can add a shadow effect to make your text stand out. Click "T" from the edit panel to give the text a shadow highlight.
Customize the font, colors, size, spacing and even add a shadow effect to your captions.

Click more options (indicated by "..." in the action bar) to change the font, line spacing and position.

💡
Pro-Tip
When styling your subtitles, ensure that they are tailored to fit the video, are clearly readable, and do not distract from the main subject of the video.

Step 4: Export and Download

Make sure there are no spelling or grammatical errors in your captions once you've added and edited them. Take a look at the preview of your video to make sure everything is where it should be.

Click Yes to begin the export process.

The next step is to click on export, then yes. Once your video is exported, you can either download the video with the captions embedded in it in an mp4 format or click on "download subtitle" to get the srt.file format of your captions.


Quick Tips for Adding Subtitles to your Social Media Videos

  • Use a contrasting color for the text of your subtitle to make it more readable.
  • A contrasting Text background highlight can boost subtitle visibility.
  • Don’t miss out on punctuation like the exclamation ‘!” or ellipses “...” to convey speech tone.
  • Avoid too much text. Two lines of text subtitles work best.
  • When translating languages, focus on the meaning more than the words.

Final Take

If you’re wondering what kind of videos really need subtitles, the answer is simple - almost any video you create, if you intend to increase views and engagement.

Subtitles help you expand your content viewership to newer audiences by creating a user-friendly video experience for everyone - people on-the-go who watch videos on mute, those who have hearing impairments or difficulties, and speakers of other languages.

Adding subtitles to videos are great for business marketing videos, especially if you’re looking to promote your brand far and wide to newer audiences that may speak an alternative language.

Educational videos that are often hindered by accessibility and language translation challenges can use subtitles to counter any language barriers.

And finally, your Social media Videos for YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Facebook video need subtitles so that people from all over the world can better engage with your videos.

When you know what video captions are and how useful they can be for your marketing strategy, you can start making the most of the time and energy you spend creating videos.

You won't have to switch between a video editor and an alternative video captioning software. All of your video captioning needs, from production to editing to translations, may be met with one convenient service.

Typito streamlines the process of adding closed captions and subtitles to videos. Subtitles and captions may be added to videos quickly and easily using this tool.

There’s a whole lot more you can do with video design on Typito. Got any questions about video marketing or how to create engaging video stories for your business? Shoot us an email at hello@typito.com.

Add Subtitles to Your Videos