Are you wondering how to add subtitles to your videos? Afraid you don’t have the time to make them yourself? Don’t worry there are fantastic applications that make automatic transcriptions. You can refine these transcriptions until you’re perfectly happy with the end result.
In this article, you will learn how to create a custom SRT file to add timestamped subtitles to your videos.
What are SRT files?
SubRip subtitle files (SRT) are plain text files that contain subtitle information. They contain start and stop times in addition to the subtitle text, so they appear at exactly the right time in your video. SRT files work on most social media sites that allow you to upload captions. You can create a single file and upload it with your videos on most platforms. Instead of manually entering hardcoded subtitles that may not work 100% correctly at first and may be difficult to edit later on.
Why should you transcribe your videos?
Because videos are played automatically on many social platforms, a large number of viewers watch them without sound. By uploading SRT files for your videos, you get more engagement and a higher viewer retention rate. You also get huge SEO benefits. When you upload SRT files to native video platforms like Facebook and Instagram, they are indexed by Google and can be crawled. All search terms in your video become searchable, allowing you to appear in more searches. You can upload SRT files to native videos on some social media platforms to add subtitles to your videos.
With SRT files, you get full control over the subtitles of your video. Automated transcription services are useful, but not foolproof, and otherwise great videos can look a little less believable if the subtitles are substandard.
What to do when a platform doesn’t support SRT files?
Although you can’t currently add SRT files directly to LinkedIn, Twitter, the organic content of Instagram and Pinterest, you can add subtitles to your videos with most video editing applications. In the video file, the subtitles are hard-coded, similar to a text overlay. You don’t get the SEO benefits with hard-coded subtitles, but you do get the engagement benefits of subtitles on your video.
How to create SRT Files?
Manual
You can create SRT files with almost any text editor you have installed on your computer. For example, Notepad works for Windows users and TextEdit for Mac users. When you create an SRT file in a text editor, you must format the text correctly and save it as an SRT file. This format must contain the following:
[Section of subtitle number] [Time at which subtitle is displayed begins] -> [Time at which subtitle is displayed ends] [Subtitle].
To format the timestamps correctly, show: [hours]: [minutes]: [seconds], [milliseconds]
Proper formatting is crucial for SRT files to work correctly.
Once your subtitle file is complete, convert your file to plain text (many text editors automatically have rich text set as the default) and then save it as an SRT file. If necessary, manually change the “.txt” in the file name to “.srt”.
Automated
Want to skip a few steps? Although some people prefer to use a text editor to create SRT files, it can be less time-consuming to create them via professional transcription software like Amberscript. The software allows you to create automatic transcriptions. They even have an option to send in your video to them and have their transcribers make professional subtitles for your video.
