Subtitle maker

Making subtitles by hand, and why nobody does it twice

Subtitling manually means transcribing the audio, splitting it into readable blocks, and setting a start and end time for each one. For a ten-minute video that is a few hours of work, and the timing pass is the part that takes longest and ages worst — a single inserted line can push everything after it out of sync.

Automatic generation inverts the job. The transcription and the timings arrive already done, and your time goes into reviewing rather than producing. For most recordings that turns hours into a few minutes of reading.

What makes subtitles readable

Generated blocks follow these conventions by default, and the editor lets you merge or split anything that reads awkwardly for your particular material.

• Two lines maximum per block, so the text never covers the picture.
• Break at clause boundaries rather than mid-phrase — a subtitle that splits a noun from its verb is measurably harder to read.
• Leave a block on screen long enough to read comfortably; roughly a second minimum, longer for denser text.
• Keep speaker changes in separate blocks rather than combining them.

Subtitles in another language

Any recording can be turned into subtitles in any of the 76 supported languages, in either direction. The most common use is making an English subtitle track for a video in another language so it reaches a wider audience, but every pair works — the translation runs on the transcript and inherits its timings, so the subtitle appears exactly when the line was spoken.

Formats and where they go

Export as SRT for video platforms and editing software, VTT for web players, or TXT when you want a plain transcript with no timings for show notes or documentation. All three are produced from the same job.