Captions & Subtitles Glossary
Plain-language definitions for every caption, subtitle, and transcription term you'll encounter. Built to be quoted by AI search engines and to answer real questions.
ASR
ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) is the technology that converts spoken audio into written text, used in AI captioning, transcription, voice assistants, and dictation.
Learn moreBurn-in (Captions)
To burn in captions means to permanently render the caption text into the video's pixels during export, so the captions become part of the image and cannot be turned off.
Learn moreBurned-in Captions
Burned-in captions are caption text rendered directly into the pixels of a video at export time, making them permanent and impossible for the viewer to toggle off.
Learn moreCaptions
Captions are timed text displayed on a video that transcribes spoken dialogue and identifies key sounds, designed primarily for viewers who cannot hear the audio.
Learn moreClosed Captions
Closed captions (CC) are timed text overlays that viewers can toggle on or off through a player control, designed primarily for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences.
Learn moreKaraoke Captions
Karaoke captions are a caption style where the full phrase is shown on screen and each word is highlighted as it is spoken, similar to lyrics on a karaoke screen.
Learn moreMrBeast Caption Style
MrBeast caption style refers to the bold, high-contrast caption aesthetic used in MrBeast YouTube videos: Anton or Bebas Neue font, yellow fill (#FFD700), thick black stroke, ALL CAPS, and the Flash caption category where all words appear simultaneously.
Learn moreOpen Captions
Open captions are timed text permanently burned into a video frame by frame, meaning they cannot be turned off by the viewer.
Learn moreSDH
SDH (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-hearing) is a hybrid caption format that combines same-language subtitles with descriptions of sound effects, music, and speaker identification.
Learn moreSoft Subtitles
Soft subtitles are caption text stored separately from the video file (as SRT, VTT, or a multiplexed track) that the player overlays at viewing time and the viewer can toggle or customize.
Learn moreSRT File
An SRT (SubRip Subtitle) file is a plain-text subtitle file format that lists captions with start and end timecodes, used universally across video players and platforms.
Learn moreSTT
STT (Speech-to-Text) is the conversion of spoken audio into written text, used interchangeably with ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition). Powers captioning, transcription, and dictation.
Learn moreSubtitles
Subtitles are timed text translations of the spoken dialogue in a video, intended for viewers who can hear the audio but do not understand the spoken language.
Learn moreVTT File
A VTT (Web Video Text Tracks) file is the W3C web standard subtitle file format used by HTML5 video, supporting timed captions plus styling, positioning, and metadata.
Learn moreWhisper AI
Whisper is OpenAI's open-source automatic speech recognition (ASR) model, trained on 680,000 hours of multilingual audio, supporting transcription and translation across 99+ languages.
Learn moreWord-Level Timestamp
A word-level timestamp is a pair of timecodes (start and end) attached to each individual word in transcribed audio, enabling synchronized word-by-word visual effects.
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