Which tool to choose
It depends on where the video ends up and what you need to export.
- The video is going on YouTube: YouTube Studio. It generates the subtitles on its own after upload, supports a great many languages, and lets you edit the text in the browser. Free and unlimited.
- You need to burn the subtitles into the video for social media (Instagram, TikTok): CapCut. It generates the captions in a few seconds with animated styles, free and without a watermark on the basic plan. Limitation: exporting the separate subtitle file is paid.
- You need the subtitle file to reuse elsewhere (an SRT, the standard format): YouTube Studio or a free subtitle editing tool. You can load the SRT file onto any platform.
- You want precise subtitles on a professional video, controlling every line: a dedicated tool that generates the SRT and lets you fix the timing line by line.
How to do it
The path changes a bit between uploading to YouTube and editing in an editor: where it diverges, I'll point it out.
- Start from understandable audio. Automatic subtitles come from the speech: if the audio is noisy, the errors multiply. If needed, clean up the audio first.
- Generate the subtitles.
- On YouTube: upload the video; after processing, in the subtitles section you'll find the automatically generated Italian version.
- In CapCut: import the video and use the automatic subtitles feature; choose the spoken language.
- Read through and correct. This is where the real work is. The AI gets names, technical terms and mangled words wrong. Scroll through the text and fix it: a subtitle with errors is worse than no subtitle.
- Synchronize where needed. Check that the text appears together with the voice, not before or after. The tools let you shift the timing of the lines.
- Export.
- From YouTube: publish the subtitles or download the SRT file.
- From CapCut: export the video with the subtitles burned on top (free), or the separate file (paid).
There is no text prompt: these tools start from the video's audio. Your control is correcting the text and the synchronization.
A concrete example
Davide publishes cooking tutorials on Instagram. He knows many people watch without sound, so subtitles are necessary. He imports the three-minute video into CapCut and turns on automatic subtitles in Italian. The AI transcribed "scalogno" as "sciallo": Davide fixes it, adjusts two lines that were appearing early, and chooses a style that's readable on a light background. He exports the video with the captions burned in. Time: ten minutes, against the hour it used to cost him to write the subtitles by hand.
When it does NOT work (and how to fix it)
If the subtitles are full of word errors
The audio was noisy or the speech too fast. Fix: clean up the audio before generating, and speak more clearly in your next videos. On the text already generated, use "find and replace" for the recurring terms the AI always gets wrong in the same way.
If the text appears before or after the voice
Automatic synchronization sometimes drifts out of phase. Fix: in the editing screen, shift the start and end times of the lines until they match the voice. The most glaring spots are enough: the eye forgives small gaps, not one-second delays.
If you can't export the subtitle file
Some free tools (like CapCut) burn the subtitles into the video but don't give you the separate file without paying. Fix: if you need the reusable SRT file, generate the subtitles on YouTube Studio, which exports it for free, and then use it wherever you want.
If the subtitles cover important parts of the image
They fall on a face or on text on screen. Fix: move the subtitle block up or down, reduce the size, and keep lines short (few words per line) so they take up less space and read faster.
A tip from someone who actually uses it
Keep the lines short and read your subtitles aloud while the video plays. If you struggle to read them in the time they stay on screen, they're too long: break them up. The rule of thumb is few words per line, one or two lines at a time. Subtitles are for people watching without sound or in a hurry: they have to land in the eye in an instant, not force you to pause.
Frequently asked questions
Are automatic subtitles free?
On YouTube Studio yes, with no limits, and you can download the file. CapCut generates them for free and burns them into the video without a watermark on the basic plan, but charges for exporting the separate file. For most uses, one of these two free options is enough.
What languages do they work in?
In a great many, Italian included. YouTube supports over a hundred languages for automatic generation. The quality is better on the more widespread languages and on clean speech.
Can I add subtitles to a video that isn't mine?
Only if you have the rights or permission. Generating subtitles for someone else's video to republish it violates copyright. For your own videos, no problem.
Are automatic subtitles good enough for the accessibility of people who can't hear?
On their own, no. For deaf people the subtitles must be 100% accurate and include indications of relevant sounds (a slamming door, a laugh): the AI transcribes only the speech, and with errors. For real accessibility, the automatic draft must be corrected line by line and enriched by hand. It's a starting point that halves the work, not a finish line.