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Subtitles

DaVinci Resolve subtitles: captions, SRT files and burn-in

Captions went from accessibility checkbox to default reading mode. Doing them properly is a short workflow: transcribe, correct, style once, then choose whether they burn into the picture or travel beside it.

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  • Transcribe, correct, style; in that order
  • Burn-in for social, SRT sidecar for platforms
  • Safe areas that survive every phone crop
A luminous film frame floating in a dark room with neat rows of glowing caption bars hovering below it
The track

Captions live on a track, not baked into the picture

Keeping captions as a subtitle track means they stay editable forever: fix a name after review, swap the language, or turn them off entirely for a screening. Burn-in is a delivery decision, not an editing one.

  • A subtitle track rides with the timeline, one cue per line group
  • Corrections and translations change the track, never the footage
  • Burn-in only at export, when a platform demands it
Transcribe

Let the machine draft, then correct with judgement

A speech to text pass turns the mix into timecoded cues in minutes. The draft handles clean dialogue well and stumbles on names, jargon and crosstalk, so treat the pass as a first draft: read every line once with the picture.

  • Transcribe the timeline audio into a cue list as a first draft
  • Fix names, terms and speaker changes while watching the picture
  • Split long lines to one or two rows; a wall of text reads as noise
Styling

Styling that survives every screen

Caption design is safe area work: phones crop, platforms overlay their own UI, and thin fonts vanish on bright frames. One high contrast style with generous position margins covers all of it without per platform rework.

  • Keep cues inside the title safe area, well clear of platform UI
  • High contrast and a light backing plate beat decorative fonts
  • For vertical publishing, raise the line so a thumb does not cover it
Delivery

Burn-in, sidecar, or let the platform caption it

Three delivery styles, three jobs. Burned in captures attention and cannot be switched off; an SRT sidecar is editable, translatable and preferred by YouTube; and a clean master without either keeps the archive ready for both.

  • Vertical social: burn in the styled captions and publish as seen
  • YouTube and archives: export an SRT sidecar next to the master
  • Keep one clean version without captions for re-edits and licensing
Help

Frequently asked questions

Subtitles questions that come up before a first render.

How accurate is the transcribe pass?

On clean dialogue it is close, and it is usually faster to correct than to type from scratch. Plan on a correction pass for names, jargon and overlapping speech: it is a draft, not a transcript.

Can I import an existing SRT file?

Yes: standard SRT files load onto the subtitle track, which is the easy way to bring captions from another editor or a client. Export works the same way for handing captions back out.

Should captions be burned in or delivered as a file?

Burn-in for vertical social, where the look is part of the design and the platform will not offer its own. An SRT sidecar for YouTube and anywhere accessibility or translation matters; keep the master clean for both.

Do captions help reach, or only accessibility?

Both. A large share of feeds are watched muted, so captions carry the story on their own; platforms also index the text in sidecar files, which quietly helps discovery.

Keep reading

Where this fits in the workflow

The studio is one project with several pages. These are the pages that usually come before and after this one.

Vertical videoVertical video in a landscape timeline: shorts and reels without a second project

Most vertical clips start life as part of something longer. The trick is to cut them from the same project instead of spinning up a parallel edit: duplicate the timeline, reframe, and keep one story in one place.

Read the page How-to guidesDaVinci Resolve how-to guides, collected in one place

This is the index page for the whole studio: start with the first session path if you are new, or jump straight to the task, the fix or the finishing detail you came for. Every guide runs on the same account.

Read the page Fairlight pageOnline audio editor: Fairlight mixing and finishing in the browser

Dialogue, music and effects live on their own tracks in the same project as the picture. The Fairlight page gives those tracks a mixer, processing, automation and loudness metering, so the mix is finished with the film rather than exported to another application.

Read the page Deliver pageDelivery presets and the media pool: render straight from the browser timeline

Delivery is where a browser studio usually falls apart. Here the media pool, the timeline and the presets are one system: pick the destinations once, queue the renders and download masters that already match each platform.

Read the page
Ready when you are

Caption the next cut properly

Run a transcribe pass on your next timeline, style once, and deliver social and platform versions of the same captions.

See the vertical video workflow
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DaVinci Resolve Subtitles | Captions, SRT and Transcribe