Top Free Subtitle Editor ln SRT format
These days, subtitles are very important in videos. They allow anyone to watch the video without sound at any time. They also allow accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing.
However, captioning is not an easy task: you have to transcribe the audio to text and then align it perfectly with the video. To make your life easier, there is transcription software. Today we present 5 tools to let you caption like a professional and for free.
1-YOUTUBE
Subtitles are essential for good visibility on social networks. For this reason, Youtube offers a tool for captioning your videos and the interface is precise to use.
To subtitle with Youtube, you must first host your video on the platform, then go to the Creator Studio, and finally to the video manager. With Youtube, you can either create your subtitles or import a subtitle file, or use automatic subtitles.
BENEFITS:
- Tool integrated into the publication platform
- Possibility of adding subtitles to the video in several ways: downloading a file, manual or automatic transcription
- The Youtube video is in Open Caption. It is possible to add several subtitle tracks to the same video.
CONS:
- The tool looks complicated for someone who has never used the Youtube platform or who has never added subtitles.
- You must also post your video on Youtube to then be able to add the subtitles.
- Transcription is poor when it is automatic.
- No possibility to style your subtitles
- Can not recover video with embedded subtitles
2-KAPWING
Kapwing is a video editor that offers several services: gifs, adding subtitles, resizing videos... Kapwing allows you to easily edit videos by offering you several features. Accessible to all, this software is rather complete to edit an entire video even without editing skills. Subtitles can be added manually or automatically. However, the timeline for timing the subtitles is not very convenient and the automation of the subtitles is not optimal.
BENEFITS:
- Automatic subtitling
- Possibility to style its subtitles: color, type, size, background
- .SRT file available
CONS:
- The transcription is not optimal.
- The interface is in English only.
- The division of the text is done into large pieces.
- The software is slow. Render time is very long
- The registration of the subtitles is neither easy nor easy to perform.
3-CAPTURED
Captured is the tool that allows everyone to be able to caption. Simple and intuitive, audio transcription is within everyone's reach thanks to this automatic subtitling tool. This is the tool that will automatically transcribe your video into subtitles when it is captured. You even have the option to automatically translate your subtitles into 5 languages. Capté can also be used from your phone so you can caption your videos at any time! The tool, with its automatic captioning technique and intuitive interface, saves you time so you can spend more time on other tasks.
Unlike other solutions which have complicated interfaces, the Capté caption editor looks like a Word document, and it's also easy to use: just click on it to edit its captions.
For lack of space, we frequently find ourselves in the need to pass a piece of the sentence in the following subtitle on classic subtitle editors. It is often tedious and time-consuming because you have to copy the text from one box and paste it into the other, whereas on Capté, you simply press the Enter key to make the text of a subtitle skip from one box to the other, just like in a simple text editor!
THE PROCEDURE FOR ADDING SUBTITLES:
- Go to the Capté application
- Upload the video you want to caption
- Subtitles appear automatically thanks to voice recognition! They are not perfect and therefore need to be reworked, but this provides a good basis.
- Style your subtitles: text and outline color, size, position, adding a background, font...
- Automatically translate into one language if needed. 5 languages are available: German, Spanish, English, Italian, and Simplified Chinese.
- When your video is finalized, all you have to do is download it (the subtitles will be integrated directly into it) and post it on social networks. Otherwise, you can only download only the .SRT file
BENEFITS:
- As easy to use like Word,
- so much time saved,
- Qualitative automatic transcription
- All formats are accepted.
- Possibility to style its subtitles
- Automatic translation of subtitles into 5 languages
- SRT file available
- Ease of use
- Possibility of use of the phone
- Interface in French
CONS:
- The transcription, although it is one of the best on the market, is not perfect.
- The translation is only available in 5 languages.
4-AMARA
Amara is a tool that allows you to subtitle videos that are already uploaded, regardless of the hosting platform (Vimeo, Youtube, etc.). It's an online captioning solution. Subtitling is done manually, but the tool offers several keyboard shortcuts to save time. The principle is simple: under the video player, you have a text box in which you transcribe the audio of the video yourself as it is viewed. You can also upload your pre-written subtitles directly. Then you sync your subtitles to the video through a timeline.
BENEFITS:
- Rather easy to use
- The ability to download previously written subtitles to integrate them directly into the video
- A timeline is displayed
- A captioning guide for tips
- The possibility of uploading your subtitles
CONS:
- There is no automatic subtitling; all subtitling is done manually.
- The synchronization of the text to the audio is done in a second step.
- No possibility to style the subtitles
5-SUBTITLE HORSE
Subtitle Horse is an online tool that allows you to easily subtitle .flv files or videos hosted on Youtube. But above all, Subtitle Horse is very similar to Premiere Pro! But beware, the tool is not easy to understand at first glance, and getting started can be difficult. If you are used to Premiere Pro, getting started with the tool will probably be easy, otherwise, you may waste time in this step too and we, therefore, recommend another alternative for captioning. Subtitles are written manually as the video unfolds and then all you have to do is place them on your timeline. Also, pay attention to a certain specificity: the tool favors large screen dimensions. If your screen is small, this may make access to the tool impossible or adversely affect the user experience.
BENEFITS:
- The tool can be used from the laptop.
- You can spruce up your video with effects.
- Possibility to download the subtitles in various formats: webvtt, srt, TimeText …
CONS:
- Not intuitive for users
- No possibility to style the subtitles
- Subtitles are written manually
- Not all video formats are accepted or you need your video hosted on Youtube
- You need a large screen to be able to use the tool from the computer.
- The export is done in SRT/WebVTT/TimeText/CSV/SttXML. It is therefore impossible to directly download the video with integrated subtitles.