Add Text to Video
Add custom text overlays to your videos with full control over position, size, color, and style. Perfect for adding titles, captions, or watermarks.
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Burned-in text versus subtitles
There are two ways to put words on video. A subtitle track is a separate stream of timed text that the player renders — it can be switched off, translated, restyled, and searched, and it is the accessible option. Burned-in text is drawn permanently into the pixels of every frame during a re-encode; it cannot be turned off, and it survives any platform, player, or re-upload.
Burning in is what social video needs, because the great majority of feed video is watched with the sound off and platforms do not reliably display separate subtitle tracks. It costs a full re-encode of the footage, and it makes legibility your responsibility: text over moving imagery needs high contrast, a stroke or a solid backing bar, and a font size that survives being viewed on a phone.
Why we built this tool
The uses are captions for silent autoplay, titles and lower thirds, callouts in a tutorial, and translated text over footage.
Video editing services want an upload and an account, cap your file size on the free tier, and stamp their logo on the export — on footage that is often unreleased client work. Ours renders the text and re-encodes in your browser with WebAssembly FFmpeg, so the footage never leaves your device, there is no size or duration limit, and the only branding on the output is whatever you put there.
Tips and common mistakes
- Most feed video is watched with the sound off — captions are not optional there.
- Use a stroke or a backing bar so text stays readable over moving footage.
- Keep text away from the edges, where platform interfaces overlay controls.
- Preview at phone size, which is where nearly everyone will see it.
Quick start: using Add Text to Video
- Load the video you want to caption.
- Add your text and set when it should appear and disappear.
- Choose a font size that stays readable on a phone screen.
- Add an outline or a background bar so the text survives busy footage.
- Preview at the intended playback size, then export.
Reframe for vertical feeds with Crop Video, then reduce the file with Compress Video.