Captions vs. subtitles: How to choose the best option
Learn key differences between captions and subtitles, and when you should use them.
With social media’s global growth, there’s more need for accessible content than ever before. That means you’re reaching more types of people than ever—and even people who speak different languages entirely.
Adding captions or subtitles to your videos can help. While both improve accessibility, captions provide more context to your videos in the same language for people who are hard of hearing or watching without sound. Subtitles, on the other hand, convert the video’s spoken words into different languages, helping you reach a wider audience in a language they can understand.
Learn more about subtitles versus captions with this guide to make sure you choose the best one for your videos.
What are captions?
Captions are words that appear on videos, including social media clips, movies, and TV shows, that transcribe what people are saying or doing. They provide a text representation of the video’s audio in the same language as the recording, with the aim of helping viewers better understand the story.
Captions also include descriptions of any background sounds or music for viewers to have full context, like “Ominous music playing” or “Horns honking in the background.” Many even identify the characters who are speaking for maximum clarity.
When to use captions
Captions help people understand a video’s message for different kinds of reasons. Here are some of the most popular reasons people add captions to videos:
To improve accessibility: On-screen captions are really helpful for viewers with a hearing impairment or people who prefer to watch videos on mute. They can enjoy and understand what’s happening or being said in a video without needing the sound.
To solve for poor audio: Captions add another layer of information so viewers find it easier to follow the content, especially when there’s a lot of background noise or the audio quality isn’t good, such as content filmed in a public place. With captions, viewers can follow what’s happening in the video despite the extra sounds.
To aid SEO and discoverability: On social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, using captions can improve your video’s discoverability. These platforms’ algorithms can read the text in the captions to extract keywords and better understand what your video is about. Then, the algorithms can accurately sort your videos and recommend them to the viewers interested in related content.
There are two kinds of captions: open and closed. Open captions are burned into the video during editing and can’t be turned off. They’re a better choice if you want to ensure people always catch the video’s details, regardless of when or how they’re watching your content. Closed captions can be turned off by the person watching the video, adding flexibility. You usually control this setting in a specific social media or streaming platform’s settings menu.
How to add captions to a video
Most social media platforms do offer closed caption options, but they’re usually automatic transcriptions that are prone to mistakes, especially when spelling names. Although some platforms let you edit your transcriptions, that might require a lot of time in the editing process.
If you prefer more accuracy and personalization, tools like Captions are a better option. It uses AI to automatically add captions for more than 100 languages. You can then tweak or add custom details.
Here’s how to add captions to videos in our app:
Upload a video or record new footage
Select “Add captions” and pick your audio’s language
Click to generate captions
Customize fonts and colors, or use AI to style for you
What are subtitles?
Subtitles are written translations of what people are saying in a different language than the rest of a video. They often show up at the bottom of the screen to help viewers understand dialogue in a language the viewer might not speak. If you’re looking to expand your reach, subtitling is crucial to make content accessible and understandable so you can connect with a global audience.
For example, the majority of the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is in English*,* but at points, some characters speak Cantonese or Mandarin. These non-English lines have English subtitles to help viewers who don’t speak Cantonese or Mandarin understand what’s being said without interruption.
When to use subtitles
Adding subtitles can help your content reach a wider audience for anyone interested in that location, regardless of their native language. Let’s say you make YouTube content about your international travels, but you only speak English in the videos. Once you add subtitles, you’ve automatically expanded your potential reach to whole new parts of the world.
Like captions, subtitles also improve your content’s SEO and discoverability in the locations where those languages are spoken. Social media platforms and search engines read keywords from the subtitles in both the original and translated language. Then, it can match your content to user searches in both languages, making it appear in more search results and showing it to the viewers most likely to be interested in it.
How to add subtitles to a video
Traditionally, creators used localization services or translation workflows to add subtitles in other languages. This can be expensive and time consuming, and it’s a lot quicker to add subtitles with AI.
Here’s how to add subtitles to videos in the Captions app:
Upload a video or record new footage
Select your target language for translation and click “Add captions”
Click to generate subtitles in the new language
Customize fonts and colors, or use AI to style for you
