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By Valmera Editorial · Published · Updated

How to Add Captions to Any Video with AI

A lot of social video is watched on mute — captions aren't decoration, they're the difference between a view and a skip. Here's how to caption any video in one request, styled exactly how you want.

Caption a Video Now

Upload it and ask. Word-timed, styled, burned in. Account creation and uploads are free; a subscription is required to edit.

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Why Captions Move the Numbers

Sound-off viewers keep watching
Higher average watch time
Accessibility for deaf & HoH viewers
Clearer message in noisy feeds
Better comprehension for non-native speakers
Required look for TikTok / Reels / Shorts

The old cost was real: typing captions by hand or wrestling subtitle files and timing. With an agentic editor, captions are one line of a request — and they arrive styled, timed, and burned in. If your captioned clips start life as long recordings, see how to turn long videos into clips.

What Caption Styles Does Valmera Support?

Valmera captions support karaoke word-pop, fade / pop / slide-up entrance animations, sizes from S to XL on a continuous scale, bottom / middle / top placement, and any color — all timed word-by-word from a Deepgram nova-3 transcript.

Karaoke word-pop
Each word highlights the instant it's spoken — the bold social-clip look.
Entrance animations
Captions fade, pop, or slide up into the frame.
Sizes S–XL + in between
Named sizes plus a continuous scale — "a bit bigger" works.
Position control
Bottom, middle, or top of the frame.
Any color
Name the color in the request and it renders that way.
Word-timed timing
Word-level timestamps from Deepgram nova-3, with a whisper fallback.

Use chat to request a style or correction; the full reference is in the captions docs. Review the rendered captions against the audio, especially names, numbers, overlapping speech, and the first and last word of each phrase. Correct the transcript, render again, and check readability at the intended viewing size. Captions are burned into the Studio MP4; a successful edit record alone does not establish that every word or timing is right.

The Workflow

1

Upload the video

Any talking video up to 14GB: a Reel, a tutorial, a podcast clip, a product demo. MP4, MOV, MKV, or WebM.

2

Describe the caption style

Color, size (S–XL), position (bottom, middle, top), karaoke word-pop, and an entrance animation — fade, pop, or slide-up. Copy an example request below to start.

3

Review the preview

Check accuracy and look. The agent transcribed, timed, styled, and rendered in one pass — previews use a fast proxy, and the final export renders from your original full-quality file.

4

Fix anything by talking — or in the transcript

"Make the captions 20% bigger." "Move them to the middle." A wrong word gets fixed right in the editable transcript panel, and the captions re-render.

5

Export

Download the captioned MP4, ready for any platform. Ask for a 9:16 vertical version in the same session if you need one.

Example Requests to Copy

Social-style captions
Add karaoke captions to this clip — bold white, size L, at the bottom of the frame, with each word popping as it's spoken.
Clean YouTube captions
Add clean, readable captions to this video. White text, size M, bottom center, with a subtle fade-in. Nothing flashy — it's a tutorial.
Fix a word everywhere
The captions say 'Val Mira' at 1:32 — it's 'Valmera'. Fix it everywhere it appears and re-render the captions.

Got a Word Wrong? Edit the Transcript

You never juggle SRT or VTT files with Valmera — the transcript itself is the subtitle source, and it's editable. Open the transcript panel, fix the word the model misheard — a product name, a technical term, a mumbled number — and the captions re-render with the correction, already timed to the audio. No exporting, re-syncing, or re-uploading a subtitle file.

Captions also pair naturally with a reframe: ask for a 9:16 version and the same captions render on the vertical cut. Captioning uses credits from a paid plan. Account creation and uploads are free; processing and revisions determine editing usage.

Generate Captions and Review the Words

Styled, word-timed captions from one request. Account creation and uploads are free; a subscription is required to edit.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Upload the video to Valmera (up to 14GB — MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM) and ask: "add captions." The system builds a word-level transcript with Deepgram nova-3 speech recognition, then the agent styles the captions and burns them into the video. Add style direction in the same request — "white karaoke captions, size L, bottom of the frame."
Captions are timed from a word-level transcript generated by Deepgram nova-3 (with a whisper fallback), so each caption lands on the exact word being spoken. If a name or technical term comes out wrong, fix it in the editable transcript panel — or tell the agent "at 1:32 it's 'Valmera', not 'Val Mira'" — and the captions re-render with the correction.
Yes. You choose the color, a size from S to XL (or anywhere on a continuous scale between them), and the position — bottom, middle, or top of the frame. You can turn on karaoke-style word-pop, where each word highlights the moment it's spoken, and animate captions in with fade, pop, or slide-up.
On social feeds a large share of viewers watch with the sound off — captions are the difference between a skip and a view. They also make videos accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and easier to follow for non-native speakers, on every platform.
No — Valmera generates captions from its own word-level transcript rather than from subtitle files. In practice that replaces the SRT workflow: instead of re-timing a file when a line is wrong, you edit the word in the transcript panel and the captions re-render, already synced to the audio. The export you download has the captions burned in.
Valmera captioning requires a paid subscription and uses credits. Usage depends on the source, processing, and revisions; this page does not provide a fixed cost per minute or per captioning request. Account creation and uploads are free. Check current plans and account usage for your project.

Caption Everything You Post

Valmera captions, cuts, and polishes from plain-English requests. Account creation and uploads are free; a subscription is required to edit.

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