You may already know all the benefits of adding subtitles to your Youtube video:
- It makes your videos accessible to new audiences
- It increases the attractiveness, viewing time, engagement rate, and thus the ranking of your content on Youtube.
- Your viewers memorize your ideas better and are all the more inclined to share them on social media.
For that job, the built-in automatic subtitling in Youtube works relatively well. If you don't mind correcting reading and translation errors, Youtube Video Studio will easily generate easy-to-use subtitles.
However, at Checksub, we found that the integrated Youtube tool is not very convenient for larger projects. Don't make the same mistake we did :(
That's why I will also show you other Youtube video subtitling solutions that are much more powerful.
So, be prepared! In this post, you'll learn how to add subtitles on your Youtube videos but also other more efficient ways to do it. 8-)
How to add subtitles to Youtube videos in the platform
Youtube's interface is very ergonomic, making it simple and easy to generate subtitles on your video.
To benefit from this free subtitling, go to the Youtube Studio of your channel.
Choose a video from the list and click on "details". Then, select the language of the subtitles you are interested in in the "more options" window.
You will then be able to enter the Youtube studio editor and modify the subtitles automatically generated by the platform. Just save and you're done.
Be careful, though ! You may need to correct a lot of mistakes.
The speech recognition algorithm is far from perfect and requires you to spend a lot of time on it. Youtube's Regular users are familiar with numerous subtitling errors, and always feel free to make fun of them. Like here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrApzuyirvs
So, to put it bluntly, it may waste your time if you need to improve the productivity of your workflow.
Fortunately, as a replacement, there are other more interesting ways to do it. The first one I'm going to show you is not the simplest, but can sometimes be useful.
How to subtitle your Youtube video manually?
The first way is to do it by hand, with great courage. You need to create a manual transcription of your video by rewriting the audio content and adjusting the time code.
It's not the fastest job, but after all, that's what professional transcribers do. They spend their day listening carefully to a clip from a movie or series to reconstruct it correctly in writing.
Take inspiration from them to create professional subtitles !
But, before you get started, here are some tips that we share with you so that you don't lose your bearings.
How to create a SRT file for your Youtube video?
In case you don't have a subtitle file yet, you need to transcribe the dialogue lines of your video according to time and writing codes supported by video platforms.
One of the most universal file formats is SRT (Subrip) which is recognized by almost all video players.
To create this kind of file, simply open a blank file in any text editor (Notepad, Word, Text Edit on Mac) and transcribe your dialogs according to this structure:
After following this structure, simply save your file by adding a .srt at the end. You then get a clean SRT file!
How to import a SRT file on Youtube
The second step is to add the SRT file into your youtube video. You have here two choices:
- either you encode it directly into your video. You will need to use specific software to do the job, even though common video players and editors like VLC or Window Movie Maker can record your videos with subtitles embedded.
- either you import the SRT file into your video on Youtube, as "closed-captions". The process is simple and detailed here.
What are the best solutions to automatically add subtitles to your youtube video?
Now, if you really want to increase your subtitling productivity, there are a lot of software programs that can take care of it.
You can find on the market more powerful voice recognition technologies and more accurate translation solutions. By using them, you will save a lot of time in your work process.
Here is a small overview of what you can use :
Rev is a complete video subtitling platform for professionals. It produces subtitle and transcript files and can quickly translate your videos into more than 15 languages. It supports a wide range of formats and has a fast turnaround time. Pricing is variable and depends on the length and language of the video.
Veed is an online platform for marketers and influencers who need to edit and add subtitles to their videos. With an ergonomic and simple design, you can automatically transcribe the content of your Youtube video and share it on social networks. 10 minutes of video is free of charge. Basic options start at $12, the PRO version starts at $24.
Aimed to Youtube viewers, this Chome plugin makes the subtitles of the videos you watch appear live. Simple to use, it makes it easier and more accessible to play videos in other languages.
The Authôt tool is specifically designed for the automatic transcription of audio documents. Its "text to speech" technology works well under normal sound conditions and supports some 40 languages.
The editing interface is especially suitable for occasional transcription projects, bearing in mind that it is more expansive than on other platforms. Furthermore, it is not possible to work on cutting the script, modify the time codes, and thus convert the transcription into subtitles.
The pricing is 54€ per hour of recording with a decreasing rate according to volume.
Best Automatic video subtitling: Checksub
At Checksub, we've been working for 4 years to provide professionals and video creators the ultimate subtitling tool. Our software brings together the latest technologies on the market:
- The best speech recognition and machine translation APIs to analyze your video.
- A powerful and easy to use online subtitle editor
- A collaborative platform for working with translators, clients, and other partners
The process is simple:
- Upload your video
- Indicate the original language and the languages you may want to obtain (there are 128 languages in all).
- Check the result
- Export the written transcript file and import it on the Youtube platform.
Try one of the best subtitle translation tools on the market!
