People watch videos on buses, at work and late at night, often on mute. Captions let them follow anyway, and also help viewers who find spoken language hard to catch.
Burned-in or separate?
Burned-in captions are part of the picture and show everywhere, which suits Reels and Shorts. Separate subtitle files (such as SRT) can be switched on or off and translated, which suits YouTube and longer videos.
Style
- Large, bold text with strong contrast, or a dark box behind it.
- Two short lines at most, a few words at a time.
- Placed away from the edges and the app's buttons.
Timing
A caption should appear as the words are spoken and stay long enough to be read. If people cannot finish reading, split the sentence.
Hindi, Marathi and mixed languages
Use a font that supports Devanagari well, and avoid shrinking the text. If a speaker mixes English and Hindi, keep the spelling consistent through the video. Have a fluent reader proofread the captions.
Proofread every line
Auto-generated captions make mistakes, especially with names, product terms and regional languages. Always read the captions in the final video, not just in the editor.
We add captions in our Reel editing and long-form editing.
