Burned-in subtitles or platform auto-captions?
Most people watch with the sound off, at least at first. That single fact makes subtitles the highest-return change you can make to a short video - but the two ways of adding them are not equivalent.
What auto-captions do and do not give you
Every major platform will now generate captions for you, free, in a reasonable font. For a talking-head clip in clear English that is often enough, and it costs you nothing.
What you give up is control and portability. You cannot fix a misrecognised name, you cannot change where the text sits, viewers can switch them off, and the file you downloaded has no captions in it at all - so reposting it anywhere else means starting again.
When burning them in is clearly the right call
When the words matter and must be right: product names, numbers, technical terms, anything where an auto-caption error changes the meaning. When you post the same file to several places. And when the styling is part of your identity - consistent captions make a feed look deliberate.
Burned-in text is also the only kind that survives being downloaded, re-uploaded, or shared as a file, which is how a lot of short video actually travels.
Making them readable, which most people get wrong
Keep to one or two lines, never three. Put them in the middle third of the frame, not the bottom - platform interface elements cover the bottom, and your text disappears behind a username. Test on an actual phone before you trust it.
Use a heavy weight with a real outline or shadow, because a thin white font vanishes over bright footage. Highlight the word being spoken if you like, but do not animate every word - motion that competes with the speaker costs more attention than it gains.
The accessibility point, which is not a footnote
Subtitles are how deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers watch at all. That is a reason on its own, and it happens to align with the commercial one: the same text that makes your clip usable in silence makes it usable to people who have no other option.
If you burn subtitles in, consider also uploading a caption track where the platform supports it. The burned text serves the muted scroller; the track serves screen readers and search.
- Most of the feed watches muted, at least at first
- Auto-captions are free but cannot be corrected or restyled
- Put text in the middle third - the bottom is covered by the interface
- Heavy weight plus outline, one or two lines, never three
Questions
Do burned-in subtitles hurt reach?
No. There is no penalty for text on screen. What can hurt is text placed where the interface covers it, because viewers see a broken frame rather than a caption.
Should the subtitles match the spoken words exactly?
Close, but tightening is fine. Removing filler words makes lines shorter and easier to read at a glance, and nobody notices the difference. Never change meaning to make it fit.
What about a different language from the audio?
Burned-in translated subtitles work well and travel further than you expect - a clip in one language with readable subtitles in another often outperforms a dubbed version.
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