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Add Captions to Video

A free AI caption generator that works like a conversation: you describe the captions, an agent makes them.

To add captions to a video, upload it to Valmera, type "add captions", and the AI agent transcribes every word and burns accurately timed captions into your video. You get 11 designed presets, 12 fonts, 9 entrance animations, per-word emphasis, and any color or position — all directed in plain English, with no timeline editing.

Caption Your Video Free

Upload once, type the request, export with captions burned in. No credit card required.

Add Captions Free →
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How to Add Captions to a Video with Valmera

  1. 1
    Upload your video
    Create a free account at valmera.io and upload your video — up to 2GB or 3 hours. Valmera analyzes it once with visible progress and builds a word-level transcript, the foundation for word-accurate captions.
  2. 2
    Type the caption request
    Type "add captions" — or direct the whole look in one line: "add captions in the beast preset with a yellow highlight", or "elegant captions at the top, three words at a time, in Playfair Display". The agent styles and times every caption for you.
  3. 3
    Preview, refine, export
    Play the preview and refine by replying — "make them bigger", "move them to the middle", "pop animation instead of fade". When it looks right, export a full-quality H.264 MP4 rendered from your original upload, captions burned in.

The one-time analysis of a long video takes a while and shows visible progress. After that, every caption change is just another message.

Word-Accurate Captions from a Real Transcript

Valmera doesn't guess at caption timing. During the one-time analysis it builds a word-level transcript of your footage, so every caption appears exactly when the word is spoken — and captions can be grouped anywhere from 1 to 16 words per line, depending on the rhythm you want. Fast, punchy one-worders for short-form; calm full lines for a tutorial.

When the transcript gets a name or a technical term wrong, you fix it in the editable transcript panel and the captions re-render from the corrected text. And because of Valmera's honesty layer, every agent reply is verified against the edit that was actually made — the agent cannot tell you the captions changed if they didn't. The full option list lives in the captions documentation.

11 Caption Presets, from Podcast to Beast

Ask for a look by name: podcast for clean talk-show lines, beast for loud high-energy captions, karaoke for word-by-word highlight captions, elegant for understated titles — plus stacked, iridescent, chrome, editorial, fashion, luxe, and impact. Every preset stays fully adjustable afterwards.

Prefer plainer captions? The classic style takes 9 entrance animations — fade, pop, slide-up, punch, blur-in, whip, flash, rise, and drop — while the presets above animate word by word on their own. And per-word emphasis is where chat control shines: mark any word big, huge, accented, boxed, serif, chrome, glowing, or chroma-shifted, with a scale for how hard the emphasis hits.

Real prompts that work: "add karaoke captions with a green highlight" · "captions in the luxe preset at the top of the frame" · "make the word FREE huge and yellow every time I say it".

12 Fonts, Any Color, Any Position

Twelve bundled fonts cover the styles creators actually use: Inter Display in Black, ExtraBold, and Bold weights, Anton, Bebas Neue, Archivo Black, Poppins Black, Syne ExtraBold, Playfair Display Black, Instrument Serif, DM Serif Display, and Montserrat. Sizes run S to XL on a continuous scale, positions are bottom, middle, or top, and colors are unrestricted — including a separate per-word highlight color.

One honest limit: custom font uploads aren't supported, so brand-exact typography means picking the closest of the 12. For on-screen text that isn't tied to speech — titles, lower thirds, callouts — use the separate add text to video tool, which shares the same font library.

Captions for Reels, Shorts, TikTok — and YouTube

Short-form and long-form want different captions, and both are one message away. For vertical platforms, ask for a 9:16 (or 1:1 or 4:5) reframe in the same conversation — captions rescale to the new frame — and lean on karaoke word-pop, punchy line lengths, and bold fonts. For YouTube, burned-in captions mean your styling renders identically in every player and embed, with nothing for viewers to switch on.

Who reaches for this: talking-head creators captioning every upload, podcast teams styling clips, marketers whose videos autoplay muted in feeds, and educators who want lessons readable anywhere. If your priority is comprehension rather than style, the auto subtitle generator page covers the accessibility side of the same system.

Describe Your Captions

Preset, font, color, position, emphasis — one typed request. Free to try.

Start Editing Free →
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More Than a Caption Generator

Captions are one request inside a full agentic editor. The same upload can have its silences cut, filler words removed, music added with automatic ducking under speech, zooms punched in on emphasized words, and a color grade applied — each by describing it, and all in the same conversation as your captions. Browse every AI video editing tool to see what one chat can replace, or compare plans on the pricing page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Upload the video to Valmera (up to 2GB or 3 hours), type "add captions", review the preview, and export. The captions are burned into the finished H.264 MP4, so when you upload it to YouTube the styling looks exactly the way you approved it — on every device, in every embed. Because the captions are part of the picture, you don't have to configure anything on YouTube's side.
Yes — the Free plan includes 20 credits every day (they reset daily and don't accumulate) plus a one-time 150-credit welcome bonus, with no credit card required. Edits charge credits in proportion to the AI work actually done in each request, and simple edits like adding captions cost the least. Plus ($20/mo, 800 credits per billing cycle) and Pro ($50/mo, 2,400 per billing cycle) are there when you outgrow the free allowance.
No — and it's worth being plain about this. Valmera burns captions into the video itself; there is no SRT or VTT import or export. The upside is that every preset, font, animation, and per-word emphasis survives every platform exactly as designed, instead of being replaced by a player's default subtitle rendering. If your workflow requires a separate subtitle file for platform compliance, a manual editor with SRT export is the better fit for that step.
Yes. Valmera keeps an editable transcript panel next to the player — correct a misheard name or rewrite a sentence and the captions re-render from the corrected text. You can also just tell the agent in chat what to change. And because of Valmera's honesty layer, the agent's replies are verified against the edits actually made — it can never claim it fixed a caption it didn't.
There are 11 designed presets — podcast, beast, karaoke, elegant, stacked, iridescent, chrome, editorial, fashion, luxe, and impact — and 12 bundled fonts: Inter Display in Black, ExtraBold, and Bold, plus Anton, Bebas Neue, Archivo Black, Poppins Black, Syne ExtraBold, Playfair Display Black, Instrument Serif, DM Serif Display, and Montserrat. Add 9 entrance animations, sizes from S to XL on a continuous scale, any colors, and bottom, middle, or top positioning, and you can match nearly any caption look you've seen — by describing it.
Yes. Ask for a 9:16 reframe (or 1:1 or 4:5) in the same conversation and Valmera crops, pads, or blurred-pads the frame while the captions rescale to fit the new format. Karaoke word-pop captions — the short-form standard — are one preset away: "add karaoke captions" is the whole request.
On Free, a small Valmera mark sits in the corner of your export; on Plus and Pro there is no watermark at all. Every export closes with a brief (~2.5-second) Valmera end card after your video. Your actual frames, and the captions on them, are never stamped.

Add Captions to Your Video

Word-accurate, styled like the best creators', burned into a full-quality export. Free plan — no credit card required.

Start Captioning Free →
See pricing →

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Captions Documentation
Every preset, font, animation, and emphasis option in detail.
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