Add subtitles to your video

CutNoodle's subtitle tool turns the speech in a video into subtitles, lets you correct the text and the timing, style them, and exports the video with the subtitles burned in. It runs entirely inside your browser tab: the video is never uploaded, and it is free with no account.

Before you start: one download per device

The transcription is done by a speech model, Whisper, running on your own computer. That is why the tool is free and why nothing is uploaded, and it has one cost you should know about first: the first time you use the tool on a device, your browser downloads the model. It happens once. The model is then kept in the browser, and from the second video on the tool starts right away, even with no connection.

• Each model is a separate download. If you used Tiny and then pick Base, Base is downloaded too.
• It is per browser, not per account. Another computer, a phone, another browser on the same computer or a private window each download it again.
• Clearing the site's data removes it. So can the browser itself when the disk is nearly full. The next run downloads it again.
• On a mobile connection it uses your data. If that matters, start with Tiny or wait for Wi-Fi.

The exact size for your browser is written on the tool before you start. If you import an .srt or .vtt file instead of transcribing, nothing is downloaded at all.

How it works

1. Choose a video. MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, MKV or AVI, up to 60 minutes and 2 GB. It is opened from your disk, not uploaded.
2. Create the subtitles. Pick a model and start. The audio is read, the model writes the words with the moment each one is spoken, and the words are grouped into short lines.
3. Correct them. Every subtitle is a line you can retype. On the timeline you drag a block to move it and drag its edges to change when it starts and ends. Split, join, add and delete are one click, and everything can be undone.
4. Style them. Eight styles, ten fonts, your own colours, outline, background, size, position and animation. The preview shows exactly what the export will contain.
5. Export. The video is encoded again in the browser with the subtitles drawn on every frame, and you download an MP4.

What you can change

• Words per subtitle. Two, four or six. Two suits fast vertical clips; six reads like a normal caption line. Changing it rebuilds every subtitle, and one undo brings the old ones back.
• Style. Clean, Social, Minimal, Word Pop, Karaoke Pill, Yellow Lift, Headline and Kinetic Color. Some show a whole line, others light up or bring in one word at a time as it is spoken.
• Animation. Keep the motion the style comes with, or choose None, Fade, Pop or Rise for any style.
• Text. Ten fonts, text colour, the colour of the spoken word where the style has one, a thin or thick outline, capital letters, and a background box with its own colour and opacity.
• Size and position. Drag the subtitle on the video, or use the sliders. It stays inside the frame.

Work in progress is saved in the browser without the video. Close the tab, come back, choose the same file again, and the subtitles and the style return as you left them.

How long it takes

Transcribing in a browser is slower than a cloud service, and that is the trade for keeping the file on your machine. In our measurements with Chrome, on a computer whose graphics card the browser can use, the Base model needed between a fifth and two fifths of the length of the video. Tiny is somewhat faster and less accurate; Small is the most accurate, the slowest, and by far the largest download.

Without graphics acceleration the work falls on the processor and takes considerably longer. The tab also slows down when it is in the background, so keep it open and in front. The export is a second wait: roughly as long as the video, often less.

What it does not do

• It uploads nothing, so there is nothing to delete afterwards.
• It does not let you choose the language, and it does not translate.
• It does not tell speakers apart.
• It uses one style, one animation and one position for the whole video. You cannot style a single subtitle differently.
• An imported .srt or .vtt file carries the timing of each line, not of each word, so the word by word styles spread the words evenly across the line.
• It handles one video at a time, up to 60 minutes and 2 GB. No batch mode.
• It writes MP4 with H.264 and AAC only. The export uses the browser's own video encoder, which current Chrome and Edge have; a browser without it says so instead of exporting.
• It does not cut or trim. To take the pauses out first, use the silence remover and add subtitles to the result.

For the choices behind readable subtitles, such as line length, timing and placement, see how to add subtitles to a video.

Common questions