Add captions for viewers watching with the sound off

Plenty of videos get watched on mute, on a commute, in a waiting room, or beside someone who is asleep. Captions carry the words to those viewers, and they give everyone else something to read along with. In DepCut the whole caption job lives in the Subtitles tab.

Generate the captions

1. Open the Subtitles tab in the left panel.
2. Choose the spoken language from the list, or leave it on Detect language.
3. Click Generate subtitles.

The job runs in the background, so you can keep editing while it works. Transcription runs on a hosted service and spends credits from your account. If the cut has no speech, the panel says so and offers Try again.

Fix the words

Open the Content tab. The speech appears as editable text, one caption after another, each with a timestamp chip.

• Click a caption and type to change its text.
• Press Enter inside a caption to split it at the cursor.
• Press Backspace at the start of a caption to join it to the previous one.
• Click a timestamp to jump the playhead to that caption.

Read the whole transcript once. Names, product words and anything said quickly are the usual places for a wrong word. Regenerate at the top replaces the captions with a fresh pass, and undo brings the old ones back.

Pick a style that reads

Open the Styles tab. Each option previews the look it applies.

• Block, Highlighter and Bubblegum put a colored plate behind the words, which keeps them readable over busy footage.
• Minimal and Editorial have no plate, so they suit calm shots with clear space behind the text.
• Curiosity hook and Big & punchy draw the opening caption larger than the rest.

Choosing a style hands the font and tweaks back to that preset, so pick the style before you fine-tune.

Tune the look

Open the Options tab.

• Show subtitles turns captions on or off in the preview and the export.
• Font and Size adjust the text.
• Highlight spoken word lights each word as it is said. Choose Color, Underline or Highlight, then pick the word color with the swatch beside them.
• Reset to style returns every setting to the preset.

To move the captions, drag them on the video. The change applies to every caption, and Reset under Position puts them back.

Keep captions short enough to read in one glance. If a line runs long, press Enter in the Content tab to split it into two captions.

Watch it muted

Play the whole video once with the volume off, which is how some viewers will see it. Everything they need has to reach them as text. The captions carry the speech. A name, a number or a sound cue that the captions miss can go in a title, so press T and add it.

Then export and open Preview as a post. It starts muted, and its TikTok, Instagram and YouTube tabs show a mock-up of where each app's buttons and caption block sit over your words, so leave extra margin.

Start a project

Open DepCut, add a video with speech, and generate captions. Try three styles on the same shot before you choose one.