How to Add Subtitles to a Video for Free (Hindi or English, Reels and YouTube)
By the DocEpic team · Updated · 3 min read
Most people scroll short videos with the sound off, so captions decide whether they stop and watch. Typing them by hand takes ages. An automatic subtitle tool listens to the speech, writes the words with their timings, and lets you fix any mistakes before adding them to the video. This guide shows how to do it for Hindi or English, and how to style captions so they look right on Reels and Shorts.
Add captions in a few minutes
Auto Subtitles uses Whisper, an open-source speech-recognition model, to write the captions in the language that is spoken — Hindi in Devanagari, Tamil in Tamil script, English and many more.
- Open Auto Subtitles and add your video.
- Choose the spoken language, or leave it on auto-detect. Pick Accurate for Hindi and other Indian languages; Fast is quicker for English.
- Click Generate captions and wait while the speech is turned into text. The first time, the speech model is downloaded once.
- Read through the list of captions under the video and correct any wrong words. Click a time to play that part.
- Choose a style and position, then click Add captions to video and download. You can also download an SRT file instead.
Styles that work on Reels and Shorts
Short-video captions need to be big and easy to read on a small screen. Start from a ready-made style — White, Yellow, Boxed, Reels or Highlight — then adjust the font, size, colours and outline. Bold text with a dark outline or a box behind it stays readable over any background.
Position matters too. Instagram and YouTube put the caption, buttons and profile name over the bottom of the video, so captions at the very bottom get hidden. Use Middle, or drag the caption on the video to just below the centre. If your video is landscape, change it to 9:16 first with Resize Video so the captions are placed for the final shape.
Burned-in captions or an SRT file?
Added to the video (burned in) means the captions become part of the picture. They show everywhere — Instagram, WhatsApp status, any player — and look exactly as you styled them, but nobody can turn them off.
An SRT file is a separate text file with the captions and their times. Upload it to YouTube or Facebook alongside the video and viewers can switch the captions on or off; YouTube also uses them to understand your video. For YouTube, the SRT file is usually better; for Reels and Shorts, burn them in.
Getting more accurate captions
Clear sound makes the biggest difference: record close to the microphone, away from fans and traffic, and avoid background music under the speech. Set the spoken language rather than relying on auto-detect for short clips, and use Accurate for anything other than English. For a long recording, cut out the part you need with Trim Video first — it is faster and easier to check.
If you only need the words — for notes, a blog post or a description — Audio to Text gives you the transcript as text, Word or SRT without touching the video.
On a phone
On a computer everything runs in your browser and the video is never uploaded. Phones don't have the memory for the speech model, so there only the sound is sent to our server, turned into text in memory and deleted right away, for videos up to 3 minutes; the captions are still added to the video on your phone.
Questions people ask
Can I add Hindi subtitles automatically?
Yes. Choose Hindi as the spoken language and Accurate, and the captions are written in Devanagari. Read through them and fix any words before adding them to the video.
Is there a watermark?
No. The video you download has only your captions, with no watermark and no sign-up.
Can I edit the captions?
Yes. Every caption appears in a list under the video, where you can correct the words before adding them.
What is an SRT file?
A plain text file with the captions and their start and end times. YouTube, Facebook and most video players can load it so viewers can turn captions on or off.