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Hi everyone! I'm Eric, one of the developers behind this. Adding subtitles to videos has been a really hard problem so we wanted to make a simple web tool for i

Hi everyone! I'm Eric, one of the developers behind this. Adding subtitles to videos has been a really hard problem so we wanted to make a simple web tool for it. The other tools online only let you create an srt file or just overlay subtitles. But for content on social media, it's really important to burn the captions directly into the video. So that's what this tool is for! Thanks for checking it out!

hux_ 9y ago
Why is it important to burn the captions in? Can you expand on the social media reasons?
- joshshifman 9y ago
  Not OP, but my guess is that videos autoplay on feeds (FB and twitter for example) but without sound. Therefore, burning in the subtitles is kind of a hacky way to engage users.
  - Flimm 9y ago
    When Facebook autoplays a video, doesn't it also automatically enable the SRT subtitles?
- justswim 9y ago
  joshshifman is right. On the Facebook and Instagram mobile apps, where tons of videos are consumed today, videos play without the sound turned on, and there's no way for creators to have the captions show up without burning them directly into the videos. There's a lot of research (https://www.facebook.com/business/news/updated-features-for-video-ads https://www.facebook.com/business/news/updated-features-for-...) that shows that subtitled videos perform better for marketers and content creators.
kazinator 9y ago
> Adding subtitles to videos has been a really hard problem For whom? When? There are decent applications for this, some of them even free. I've seen fantastic fansubbing work, with beautifully rendered, animated subtitles; and that was already years ago. Making basic SRT's is easily accomplished in a rudimentary program like the old Subtitle Workshop by URUSoft: http://subworkshop.sourceforge.net/ http://subworkshop.sourceforge.net/ (Looks like those guy have been active lately and have some new stuff out: http://www.uruworks.net/index.html http://www.uruworks.net/index.html ) Burning subs into a video is easily done with a ffmpeg one-liner (using its "libass" renderer or whatever). (Someone nontechnical may need help putting together that oneliner, but after that it's just repetition.) It's generally a bad idea; don't hard sub if you can avoid it and make the video available without the hard subs.

hux_ 9y ago

Why is it important to burn the captions in? Can you expand on the social media reasons?

joshshifman 9y ago
Not OP, but my guess is that videos autoplay on feeds (FB and twitter for example) but without sound. Therefore, burning in the subtitles is kind of a hacky way to engage users.
- Flimm 9y ago
  When Facebook autoplays a video, doesn't it also automatically enable the SRT subtitles?
justswim 9y ago
joshshifman is right. On the Facebook and Instagram mobile apps, where tons of videos are consumed today, videos play without the sound turned on, and there's no way for creators to have the captions show up without burning them directly into the videos. There's a lot of research (https://www.facebook.com/business/news/updated-features-for-video-ads https://www.facebook.com/business/news/updated-features-for-...) that shows that subtitled videos perform better for marketers and content creators.

kazinator 9y ago

> Adding subtitles to videos has been a really hard problem For whom? When? There are decent applications for this, some of them even free. I've seen fantastic fansubbing work, with beautifully rendered, animated subtitles; and that was already years ago. Making basic SRT's is easily accomplished in a rudimentary program like the old Subtitle Workshop by URUSoft: http://subworkshop.sourceforge.net/ http://subworkshop.sourceforge.net/ (Looks like those guy have been active lately and have some new stuff out: http://www.uruworks.net/index.html http://www.uruworks.net/index.html ) Burning subs into a video is easily done with a ffmpeg one-liner (using its "libass" renderer or whatever). (Someone nontechnical may need help putting together that oneliner, but after that it's just repetition.) It's generally a bad idea; don't hard sub if you can avoid it and make the video available without the hard subs.