Make VTT File

Generate and download a captions file for a video.
Make VTT File Screenshot

Automatically Generate or Edit a VTT file

Closed captions are essential for posting engaging videos on social media. With Kapwing’s Subtitle Editor, generate a transcription using AI technology in seconds. Then, download the file in the VTT format (short for “Web Video Text Tracks”) to publish on a native video player like YouTube, Instagram, or another social media platform.

Rather than manually editing a VTT file in your desktop text editor, creators can make changes to each line of text and its timings while previewing the subtitles on their video. Upgrade to download your captions as VTT or SRT files or embed the captions directly into your video for free.

Kapwing’s automatic VTT file maker uses an advanced speech recognition API to convert the video to text. It also has intuitive design tools to format and style the caption text and process the video in the cloud.

Automatically Generate or Edit a VTT file Screenshot

How to Make and Edit a VTT File for a Video

How to Make and Edit a VTT File for a Video
  1. Upload Video
    Upload the video that you want to add captions to. Trim and edit the video inline.
  2. Generate, Type, or Import Subtitles
    Use Kapwing’s smart technology to auto-generate subtitles on your video. Or, type them manually. Then, adjust the text and timing to make the captions perfect.
  3. Download VTT File
    Find the “Download VTT” option in the left-hand column to get the transferable web text track file for social media.

What is a VTT File?

VTT files are useful when uploading Closed Captions to social media platforms. Some websites, like Articulate 360, only support VTT files while other websites only support SRT files. LinkedIn and YouTube’s video viewers support both SRT and VTT files for captioning. In most cases, these captions will only appear when the user clicks the “CC” button in the viewer — if you want the text to appear for every viewer, you have to add Open Captions instead. Most hosting platforms have a space to upload a subtitle file before you publish, then display the subtitles within the native video viewer depending on the user’s settings.

Subtitles make videos on social media more engaging for people with the sound off and more accessible to people with hearing disabilities. If you have multiple audiences who speak different languages, you might want to upload a VTT to the platform instead of burning the text directly into the video so that different languages appear for different viewers.

Use Kapwing’s VTT file editor to avoid this finicky formatting and reduce the high cost of ordering caption files for every video you make. Kapwing’s platform allows you to generate or type out subtitles, time them out against the video, and then download a new updated VTT file. This editor makes it much easier to listen to the video and create an VTT file to match the audio track or automatically extract the subtitles from the video’s audio track.

If you have a Kapwing Pro Workspace, you can now download your subtitles as a VTT file. Just open the subtitle maker, generate or type out the text, adjust the timings, and click the “Download VTT" button in the left column.

If you want to get the VTT file for videos that you’ve already created, just click “Edit” to go back to the subtitle editor and download the VTT file retroactively. We hope that this new functionality makes it easier for Kapwing Pro customers to produce captioned social media videos at scale.

Frequently Asked Questions

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What is the timestamp formatting for a VTT file?

A VTT file uses the numeric formatting HH:MM:SS.MMM with an arrow ”-–> ” between the start and end time. An example might be 00:07.204 —> 00:08.000 with the text “This subtitle goes between 7 and 8 seconds” on a new line below. A blank new line separates the caption text and the next timestamp. VTT files begin with WEBVTT in the first line, and there is no marker for the end of the file.

What’s the difference between an SRT and VTT file?

Also used to save closed captions, an SRT file (or “subrip” file) is similar to a VTT file with slightly different formatting. SRT files have numbered list of captions, whereas VTT files do not have numbered ordering. SRT files also use a comma rather than a period before the milliseconds and do not support text styling info. UTF-8 encoding is required for .vtt files and optional for .srt files.

How do I order a VTT file?

Some brands and social media creators use professional services like Rev to order SRT or VTT files for each video they make. These take several hours to get back and cost at least $1 per minute. However, you can make a tremendous amount of time and money by using AI to transcribe videos automatically and tweak them yourself in a VTT maker editor like Kapwing. Automatically generated captions often have some typos that need adjustment, but your manual read-through will ensure that the VTT file is accurate and stylized correctly.

What's different about Kapwing?

Easy
Easy
Start creating immediately with thousands of templates and copyright free videos, images, music, and GIFs. Repurpose content from the internet by pasting a link.
Free
Free
Kapwing is completely free to start. Just upload a video and start editing. Supercharge your editing workflow with our powerful online tools.
Accessible
Accessible
Automatically subtitle and translate videos with our AI-powered Subtitler tool. Caption your videos in seconds, so that no viewers get left behind.
Online
Online
Kapwing is cloud based, which means your videos are wherever you are. Use it on any device and access your content anywhere in the world.
No spam or ads
No spam or ads
We don't serve ads: we're committed to building a quality, trustworthy website. And we will never spam you nor sell your information to anyone.
Powerful
Powerful
Kapwing works hard to help make the content you want, when you want it. Get started on your project today.
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