How to add captions to a video automatically

#Why short videos need captions

Many people scroll Reels, Shorts and TikTok with the sound off, in public, at work or late at night. Captions let them follow you anyway. They also help viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, people watching in their second language, and anyone in a noisy place.

Word-by-word captions, where each word appears or lights up as it's spoken, keep the eye on the screen. That's the style most creators use for talking videos, and it's what Vireeli makes by default.

#Add captions in five steps

1. 1Create an account, pick a plan and open New reel.
2. 2Upload your video: MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM or MKV.
3. 3Set Speech language. Vireeli understands 35 languages plus Hinglish; Auto detects the language, but picking it is more accurate.
4. 4Pick a Caption style and click Make my reel. Vireeli transcribes the speech and lays the captions over the video in that style.
5. 5When it's ready, open it, read through the Captions tab, fix any word, and click Export.

#How automatic captions work

Vireeli sends the audio to a speech-to-text service, which returns every word with the moment it starts and ends. Those timings are what let captions appear word by word, in sync with your voice, instead of as long blocks of subtitles.

An AI model then reads the transcript to plan the edit: which words to highlight, where the zooms go and what the hook should say. Your video stays private to your account the whole time.

#Check and edit the captions

Speech recognition is good but not perfect, especially with names, slang and brand words. Before you post, read the captions once in the Captions tab:

• Click a word to correct it, split it or give it a highlight colour.
• Use Find & replace to fix a word that's wrong everywhere, like a product name.
• Hide a word from the captions while keeping it in the audio.
• Make one line bigger or smaller, move it, or hide it.

If many words are wrong, the speech language was probably off. Optimize in the Captions tab transcribes the video again in the language you choose, for free. More in how to fix wrong words in auto captions.

#Make the captions look the way you want

Pick from 40 caption styles, from bold uppercase words with a coloured highlight to calm sentence-style subtitles. Each one can be changed: font, size, colours, outline, shadow, position, how many words show at a time, emojis and animation. Save the result as your own style to reuse it.

See how to choose a caption style and how to customise captions.

#Export with captions, or as a subtitle file

#Questions and answers