How to Add Subtitles to a Video for YouTube
To add subtitles to a video for YouTube, open Subtitles in Studio, pick the video, click ADD LANGUAGE, and choose one of three routes: upload a file, auto-sync a transcript, or type them by hand.
Open the free subtitle generator →
Add subtitles to a video for YouTube in Studio
The three methods behind ADD LANGUAGE do genuinely different things.
Upload file takes a subtitle file and asks you to choose With timing or Without timing, then Continue. Auto-sync takes the words — typed in or uploaded as a transcript — and aligns them to the audio for you. Type manually plays the video and lets you enter captions as it goes.
Auto-sync is the one worth knowing about: it means you can write the transcript in any text editor, without timecodes, and let YouTube do the alignment.
What automatic captions cover, and what they don't
YouTube generates captions with speech recognition and publishes them on the video when they're available. The language list is long. English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian and many more.
There's one limit that catches people: automatic captions are in the video's default language only. They're a starting draft in one language, not a translation service. Everything else has to be added as its own track.
Word-by-word captions burned into the picture
In a vertical feed, nobody opens a settings menu to turn captions on. The text either exists in the frame or it doesn't.
Montaj transcribes the audio on your device and produces karaoke captions where each word has its own timing, editable inline — so fixing a mangled name is typing over it, and the timing follows the correction instead of needing a re-sync. The audio never leaves the device to do it. The export is 1080×1920 with the captions in the picture, which is what you want for a Short and specifically what you don't want for a long-form upload where a selectable track is the better answer to add subtitles to a video for YouTube.
How to caption a YouTube video in 4 steps
- 1
Check what automatic captions already gave you
YouTube uses speech recognition to create captions automatically, and publishes them on the video when they're available. They're generated in the video's default language only.
- 2
Open Subtitles in YouTube Studio
From the left menu choose Subtitles, select the video, then click ADD LANGUAGE to start a track.
- 3
Pick one of the three methods
Upload file, choosing between With timing and Without timing then Continue; Auto-sync, where you enter the words or upload a transcript and YouTube aligns them; or Type manually, playing the video and typing as you go.
- 4
Read it back against the video
Names, brands and technical terms are where speech recognition fails, and they're usually the words that mattered. Fix those specifically.
The verdict
— Thomas, Social Media Manager