Subtitles

What subtitles are

Subtitles are a separate timed text file that travels alongside a video. It holds the spoken words broken into short blocks, each with a start time and an end time. The viewer switches them on or off, and the video file itself is untouched.

They are not captions in the sense used elsewhere on this site. Captions are burned into the picture: they are part of the image, they cannot be selected, copied or turned off, and they are the right choice for a social feed that plays silently. Subtitles are a file, they can be switched off by a viewer who does not want them, and the text in them can be read by software rather than only by eyes. Different jobs, and most businesses that publish video need both.

When you need one

You need subtitle files for video on your own website, on a course or training platform, on YouTube, and anywhere a viewer is watching for more than a minute. Long video with burned-in text is tiring and covers the picture; a switchable track lets the viewer decide.

You need them for accessibility, which is the argument that matters most and gets raised least. A person who is deaf or hard of hearing cannot use your video without them, and neither can someone in a noisy workshop or a quiet office. Public sector buyers, universities, hospitals and a growing number of large private clients will ask whether your video material is accessible, and the honest answer has to be a file, not an intention.

The thing you do not need is the automatic track the platform generates on upload. It is free, it is instant, and it is wrong in exactly the places that cost you something: people's names, your product names, prices, part numbers and any technical term specific to your trade. A viewer who reads your own product name rendered as a different word has been told, in your own video, that nobody at your company watched it. That is worse than having no subtitles at all, because an absent track is a gap and a wrong one is a claim.

You also do not need this as a separate purchase if the clip is thirty seconds long and going to a feed. Buy burned-in captions for that, and the caption file comes with them.

What gets done

The recording goes through transcription software first, because that part is fast. Then the work happens.

• The correction. A person listens to the whole recording against the text. Names, products, place names, figures and technical terms are checked against your website or a list you send, not guessed at.
• The timing. Each block is set to appear as the words are spoken and to leave before the next begins, with enough time on screen to be read at a normal pace.
• The line breaks. Two lines at most, broken where a person would pause, so a phrase is never split across a change of block. Numbers and names kept whole.
• The non-speech marks. Speaker changes marked where two voices could be confused, and sounds that carry meaning noted, because a viewer who cannot hear needs to know a phone rang.
• The formats. The finished track exported as SRT and as VTT, which between them cover nearly every player, platform and course system in use.

Where the video was made from a written script, the script is used as the source and the file is exact to the word. Where it was not, a short list of any word that genuinely cannot be made out is sent to you with its timecode, rather than a confident guess being typed in.

What you get

The subtitle files. One SRT and one VTT per video, named to match the video file, ready to upload with no reworking.

A plain text version. The same words without timings, which doubles as a short transcript for the page the video sits on.

A terms list. The spellings used for your names, products and jargon, kept and reused on every later video so the files stay consistent.

An upload note. Half a page saying which file goes where for the platforms you actually use, so nobody has to work it out twice.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Guelph manufacturer of hydraulic fittings publishes eleven installation videos on its website and on YouTube, each seven to twelve minutes long. The automatic track is switched on. It renders the company name as two different words, turns the name of a thread standard into a phrase that means nothing, and mishears the torque figure in the tightening sequence.

Subtitle files are made for all eleven. A person corrects the text against a list of forty product and standard names supplied by the technical manager, times the blocks, and marks the two speakers in the videos that have a voiceover over a demonstration. SRT and VTT files are delivered named to match each video. The distributor who resells the fittings, which has an accessibility requirement in its supplier terms, can now be given the videos. The torque figure in the subtitles is the figure in the manual, which was the part that actually mattered.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. How many videos, how long, where they will be hosted, and whether an accessibility requirement is driving it. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per video or per minute of footage, agreed before anything starts.
3. The files. You send the videos or links, plus the list of names, products and terms that must be right.
4. The work. Three to five working days for a batch of up to ten short videos. The first file is sent for approval before the rest are finished.
5. Delivery. SRT and VTT for each video, the plain text, the terms list and the upload note, with any unclear words flagged by timecode for you to settle.

What it costs

Subtitles are quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. The price depends on the total minutes of footage, the sound quality, the number of speakers, how much specialist vocabulary is in it, and whether a checked script or transcript already exists. A standing arrangement covering every video you publish is priced per minute and stated in writing. The pricing page explains how fixed pricing works across every service.

What happens next

A subtitle file is usually bought alongside two other things. Short clips cut from the same footage for a feed need the words in the picture, which is burned-in captioning. The full words as a readable document, quotable and skimmable, are an edited transcript, and that transcript is the starting point for everything else the recording can become. If the video needs to exist in French as well, the corrected file is the source for a translated track. The subtitle files are complete on their own, and nothing further is assumed.