Captions & subtitles

Captions and subtitles are text versions of a video's spoken audio. They help viewers follow your content when the sound is off, making it more accessible and engaging. 

Below, you will find our comprehensive guides and resources to help you understand captions and subtitles, and discover how to add text to your videos with ease.

_{What are captions vs. subtitles?}

Captions and subtitles both show text on screen, but they serve different purposes. Captions help viewers follow everything happening in a video's audio, including spoken text, sound effects, and music cues.  Subtitles focus on dialogue and help viewers understand speech when they do not speak the video's original language. 

Our blog guides cover:

• The difference between subtitles, closed captions, and open captions.
• When to use closed captions instead of open or burned-in captions.
• Caption and subtitle formats, for example, SRT and VTT files.

_{Caption and subtitle software}

Manually typing out your audio takes hours. AI caption and subtitle software automatically generates captions and subtitles with a click.

We review the best tools and services to speed up your video captioning workflow.

Our guides include:

• The best free and paid subtitle software for creating subtitles and caption files.
• The best apps to caption videos on mobile and PC.

_{How to add captions and subtitles to videos}

To add captions to a video, you can burn them in permanently using a video editor, or keep them toggleable by uploading a caption file. Every platform and tool handles this differently, so the right workflow depends on where you're publishing.

Our blog covers:

• How to add captions and subtitles on editors like Premiere Pro, CapCut, or iMovie.
• How to add or turn on captions on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
• How to create subtitle files for open captions.

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• Best apps to caption videos