Captions let people follow a talking clip on a bus, in an office or late at night next to someone asleep. Every big platform can now add captions for you, but they are not all the same kind of caption, and the difference matters for how your clip looks and who can read it. Here is what each platform offers, and when it makes sense to add your own.
Two kinds of captions
Closed captions are a separate text track. The viewer switches them on or off, and the app decides how they look. Open captions, often called burned-in captions, are part of the picture: everyone sees them, styled exactly as you made them, on every platform you post to.
Both have their place. Closed captions respect the viewer’s own settings, which matters for accessibility. Burned-in captions make sure the words are there even for people who never turn captions on, and they let you design them: the size, the colors, the position, and the word being spoken lit up as it is said.
Captions inside TikTok
TikTok can generate captions while you edit a video in the app. Look for Captions on the editing screen, read the text, and fix any word it misheard before you post. Viewers can hide these captions, or turn them on for every video in their accessibility settings. The feature is not available in every language or region.
Captions on Instagram Reels
Instagram can add automatic captions to Reels in many languages, and viewers choose in their settings whether to see them. Depending on your app version, there is also a captions sticker in the editor that places the transcribed text on the video itself. Menus move around between versions, so if you cannot find either option, update the app.
Captions on YouTube Shorts
YouTube creates automatic captions for Shorts in a number of languages, and viewers turn them on with the CC button. You can review and correct them in YouTube Studio, or upload your own subtitle file instead. Like the other platforms’ captions, they only show for viewers who switch them on.
Why many creators burn captions in anyway
Platform captions are free and easy, yet most clips you see in a feed carry their own. There are good reasons for that.
- They show for everyone, including the many people who never switch captions on.
- They look the same on TikTok, Reels, Shorts, LinkedIn and X, so one export works everywhere.
- You can design them: big, high-contrast text, two lines at most, the spoken word highlighted.
- Names, numbers and jargon are fixed once, in one place, instead of on every platform.
How to add burned-in captions with Vidoveli
The cost of burned-in captions used to be time: typing and timing them by hand takes far longer than the clip itself. Vidoveli’s auto caption generator removes most of that work by captioning every clip it makes, from the same transcript it uses to choose the clips.
- Paste a link to your video on YouTube, Google Drive or Dropbox, or a direct link to the video file, or upload it.
- Get AI clips. Each one arrives with animated captions timed word by word, in the language of the video.
- Pick a caption style and adjust the font, size, colors and position, then apply it to every clip at once.
- Read the transcript for names and numbers and correct them. The captions follow.
- Export the MP4. The captions are part of the picture, ready for any platform.
Where captions go on a vertical video
Every platform covers part of a vertical video with its own interface: the post text, the account name and the sound along the bottom, and the like and share buttons down the right side. Captions placed there get hidden. A safe default is just below the middle of the frame, with the speaker’s face in the upper half, where a vertical video converter with speaker tracking keeps it.
Keep lines short. One line per screen suits fast, punchy clips; two lines work for calmer explanations. For fonts, sizes and highlighting, see caption styles that keep people watching.
Make them accessible, not just attractive
Captions are also how deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers follow your clip, so accuracy comes first. Check proper names, numbers and technical terms, which is where automatic transcripts slip most. Do not put words on screen faster than people can read them, and keep enough contrast between text and picture, with a stroke or a background box over busy footage.
If your captions are burned in, viewers who keep the platform’s captions switched on may see the words twice, so for short clips burned-in captions alone are usually the cleaner choice. For longer videos on YouTube, a subtitle file lets viewers choose their own text size; Vidoveli can download a clip’s transcript as an SRT file for that.
A checklist before you post
Run through these on your phone, not on a big monitor. That is where the clip will be watched.
- Every name, number and brand is spelled right.
- Captions sit clear of the bottom bar and the side buttons.
- The text is large enough to read at arm’s length.
- No more than two lines are on screen at once.
- The words stay readable over the brightest frame in the clip.
