Is MakeCaption really free?

Yes — MakeCaption is completely free to use, with no watermarks, no subscriptions, and no usage limits. There's no account to create. The tool runs entirely in your browser, so we don't have server costs to recoup with paywalls.

Do my videos get uploaded to a server?

No. Every step — audio extraction, AI transcription, caption rendering, and final export — runs locally in your browser using WebAssembly. Your video never leaves your device, which is why MakeCaption is safe to use for client work, internal content, and anything you'd rather not hand to a third party.

Which platforms is MakeCaption built for?

MakeCaption is optimized for vertical short-form video: TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Reels, LinkedIn vertical posts, and Snapchat. The default styling presets, positioning, and aspect ratios are tuned for mobile viewing where most short-form video is consumed.

What video formats are supported?

Most common formats work out of the box: MP4, MOV, WebM, AVI, and others. MakeCaption uses FFmpeg.wasm under the hood, which supports the same codecs FFmpeg does on a desktop. If your file plays in a modern browser, MakeCaption can almost certainly handle it.

How long does it take to generate captions?

For most videos, transcription takes about half the length of the video itself — a one-minute clip transcribes in roughly 30 seconds on a modern laptop. The very first run is slower because the AI model has to download (it's then cached for future use). Burning captions into the final MP4 takes another 10–30 seconds depending on resolution.

Can I edit the captions after they're generated?

Yes. After transcription, every word and timestamp is editable. You can fix mistakes, adjust timing, merge or split phrases, and tweak punctuation before you render the final video. Nothing is locked in until you click export.

What languages does MakeCaption support?

The current build is tuned for English, but the underlying Whisper model supports dozens of languages. Broader multilingual support is on the roadmap — if you have a specific language you need, let us know via the contact page.

Will captions hurt my video quality?

No. MakeCaption re-encodes the final video at high quality with captions burned in as a separate visual layer. The result is the same resolution as your source video, with captions rendered crisply on top — no compression artifacts from the captions themselves.

Editorial Policy | MakeCaption

Who writes for this site

Everything on this blog is written and reviewed by the team that builds MakeCaption. We publish under a team byline rather than individual names. That is a deliberate privacy choice, not an attempt to obscure accountability: every article is the responsibility of the site owner, and any factual dispute can be raised through our contact page, which is monitored.

What we claim expertise in

Our first-hand experience is narrow and specific. We build a browser-based captioning pipeline: extracting audio with FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly, running OpenAI's Whisper speech-recognition model on-device via Transformers.js, refining word-level timestamps against an audio energy envelope, and rendering caption frames to a canvas before encoding them back into video.

When we write about transcription accuracy, subtitle file formats, caption timing or on-device rendering, we are describing systems we have built and debugged. When we write about platform-specific behaviour — how a given social network displays captions, or what its current specifications are — we are reporting on third-party products we do not control, and we cite the platform's own documentation wherever possible.

Sourcing and statistics

Any statistic in an article carries a numbered reference to its origin at the foot of the page. We prefer primary sources: platform documentation, published research, and standards bodies. Where a widely-repeated figure cannot be traced to a primary source, we either drop it or say plainly that its provenance is unclear rather than laundering it through another blog.

We do not present vendor marketing claims as independent research, and we do not cite our own product as evidence for a general claim about the industry.

Review and corrections

Articles that describe third-party platform behaviour age quickly. We revisit them periodically and show a “Reviewed” date on any article that has been checked since publication. A review means someone re-read the article against current documentation — not that the text necessarily changed.

If you find an error, email us via the contact page. We correct factual mistakes in place and note substantive corrections at the foot of the affected article.

How this site makes money

MakeCaption is free and has no paid tier. The site is funded by display advertising served through Google AdSense. Advertising is clearly distinguishable from editorial content, and no advertiser has any input into what we publish, review or recommend.

We do not publish sponsored posts, paid guest posts, paid link placements, or affiliate links. If that ever changes, this page will say so before any such content appears, and individual posts will be labelled.

Advertising cookies are only set after you consent. You can change or withdraw that consent at any time using the “Cookie Settings” link in the footer. See our Privacy Policy for the full detail on what is collected.

Use of AI tools

We use AI-assisted tooling for drafting and editing, in the same way we use a spellchecker or a linter. Every published article is reviewed, fact-checked and edited by a human before it goes live, and the technical claims are checked against our own implementation. We do not auto-publish generated text, and we do not publish articles on topics where we have nothing first-hand to add.