4 Great Options to Add Subtitles to Videos Online (free/paid)

The benefits of adding subtitles to videos are immense. It makes your video accessible to broader viewers who may speak a foreign language or have hearing loss. As the watch time and engagement of your video increase, so is your video ranking on Google’s organic search.

So, in this post, we will be introducing you to 4 flexible ways to add subtitles to your videos online to meet your different needs.

Here’s What You Will Learn:

Manually Add Subtitles to a Short Video

For short video clips like promo videos, birthday parties, or wedding celebrations, etc., using a versatile and easy-to-use online video editor to add subtitles and stickers can be your great choice.

In this respect, FlexClip, a feature-rich online video maker with tons of fully customizable text animations and two editing modes (storyboard & timeline), offers you great flexibility to manually add subtitles to your videos with eye-catching elements. It’s watermark-free, free of download, and no experience needed.

Use FlexClip online video editor to add subtitles to videos

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Drag and drop your text in the media library and click on the "+" button to add it to the storyboard

Upload your video assets to Flexclip video editor

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Hit the "Text" tool on the left toolbar and add static subtitles or select from a variety of designer-made text animations like wedding, birthday, promo captions, etc. to your video. You can customize the color scheme, fonts, motion, size, and style of all subtitles or captions. To further capture viewers' attention, you may press "Elements" on the sidebar to add funky emojis, arrows, call-to-action stickers, etc.

Manually add subtitles to a short video by FlexClip video editor

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Hit the playback button to preview the video with subtitles and click on "Export" to down the MP4 file to the local computer. Or with one click, you can share your edited view to your YouTube channel or your Dropbox for storage.

Use Auto Subtitle Generator to Add Subtitles to Long Videos

If you are about to add subtitles to a long video interview, public speech, or a movie, manually adding subtitles to a video would be far time-consuming. A great solution is to use AI to automatically add subtitles to your video and then correct the inaccurate words. To that end, Kapwing's auto subtitle generator works like magic.

Add subtitles by Kapwing’s auto subtitles generator

Interestingly, not only can you directly upload your clips from the local computer, but also paste a URL to add subtitles to an online video like your YouTube video.

Then Kapwing will use AI to automatically process the video and generate subtitles for different time slots.

Since auto-generated subtitles can't be 100% accurate when it comes to slang, accents or names, etc. So, you need to playback the video from beginning to the end and correct the wrong subtitles manually.

You can directly download the video with subtitles in MP4 format locally. However, if your video is more than 7 mins, you need to upgrade to Kapwing Pro subscription for the free download.

Add Subtitles to an Online YouTube Video

Apart from online video editors like FlexClip or Kapwing, if your videos have already been published to YouTube, you can use YouTube Studio to directly add subtitles to online YouTube videos, which is completely free.

Use YouTube Studio to add subtitles to an online YouTube video

Get Professional Help to Add Subtitles to Your Video

If you are desperate to meet the deadline while preferring high accuracy for adding subtitles or captions to your videos, then asking professionals to manually add subtitles may also be a feasible solution.

In this case, an affordable subtitle service is using Rev's speech-to-text service. So, you can get professionals to add subtitles, including foreign subtitles to your video around 24 hours after you submit your order, with 99% accuracy.

Use Rev’s human service to add subtitles or captions to your videos

After your caption/subtitle file is complete, you will receive an email confirmation and Rev will attempt to upload the SRT. file directly to your online video. Or you may log into your Rev's account and down the SRT file yourself.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, there are different pros and cons for these 4 options to add subtitles to a video. If you have short clips and need a variety of subtitles and text animations, FlexClip is a perfect choice. If your videos are long and you are pressed for time to add subtitles one after another, then Kapwing's auto-subtitle generator and Rev's affordable human service could also be a great alternative. Hopefully, you will find our post helpful and don't forget to share it with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.

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Frank /

Passionate about photography, video-making and travel, Frank is a seasoned copywriter and a beloved father of 2-year-old daughter at FlexClip. He is always keen to share his latest discovery about video marketing and tricks to relive your memories through videos and images.