How to Add Subtitles to a Video and Why You Should

If you could open up your content to a wider audience, why wouldn’t you? Closed Captions (or subtitles) do just that. In this tutorial you'll learn why to use them in your social media videos, and the best ways to add them.

Why Add Captions to Your Video

Accessibility and Practicality

There are millions of people all over the world who can’t hear or who struggle with their hearing. Captioning your video not only opens up your video to them as an audience, but also helps to make sure you’re including those people who often can be left out of the online community; something that can be very isolating.

And then there are also many of us for who prefer the sound off, or for whom it’s just not practical to have the sound on when we’re watching videos: you might be on the bus or in a room full of people, and it can be frustrating to miss out on something because you can’t hear it. 85% of people watch Facebook videos without the sound on and with people watching an average of 16 hours of online video per week, that’s a big audience to miss out on if you skip the captions.

Language

Another good reason is if you’re making a video where a large portion of your potential audience might not speak the language. In that case, it’s often sensible to include subtitles in that language, to try and cover your bases.

Music

We’ve all hilariously sung the wrong lyrics over our favourite tunes before and I’m sure you’ve seen that even the big artists now release lyric videos as placeholders before their music video comes out. Not only does it give you some visuals rather than just the song, but it also helps fans to learn the lyrics and get them right!

Autoplay and Reach

When you’re flipping through social media and videos auto play, you make a split decision whether to stay with it, if it piques your interest. Having closed captions can help with that, as you can immediately get a flavour for the content by seeing just a few words.

Including subtitles includes your reach and engagement on social media. Research has shown that videos with captions are more likely to be watched to completion, and have a greater chance of being shared.

How to Add Subtitles to a Video

Facebook and YouTube let you add closed captions by either uploading them in the form of an .srt file, or by typing in line by line. Both of these options can be fiddly and often frustrating. I’ve tried to add in captions directly in Facebook only to have the video keep pinging back to the beginning and you need to find your place again.

5 Ways to Subtitle and Caption Videos Automatically Using Speech Recognition

Andrew Childress

31 Mar 2022

You can also add them within your video editing suite, which is the easier option for most filmmakers. Getting the size, placement and ratio right can be difficult though, particularly if you’re new to it.

There are some smart and talented creators who have made templates to help you create and add subtitles to a video really easily. Here’s one, from Envato Elements, where everything is included in a monthly sub.

Easy Subtitle - for Adobe After Effects

Quickly and easily add subtitles to your video with this After Effects template. Just write, paste, or import your text into a box, choose the space between the titles, add a marker, and hit create! You can then adjust your subs right on the timeline.

About This Page

How We Picked

We looked at projects and considered all kinds of variables, including organization, complexity, experience required and overall difficulty, minimum hardware specifications, included versions and options, formats, resolution, file size, dependencies and required plug-ins (if any), language options, software versions supported, style, design, and cost. You can read more about how we select items at How We Pick Templates to Feature on Envato Tuts+.

About The Authors

This page was edited by Jackson Couse. It was written and updated by Marie Gardiner.

Have you used one of these templates? Let us know on the Envato forums. We love to see the projects you create!