One question,
one answer.
The short, accurate answer to the questions creators actually search.
56–72px on a 1080×1920 canvas — about 6–8% of frame width. Use heavier fonts at the smaller end of the range and thinner fonts at the larger end.
30 fps. TikTok caps uploads at 30 fps for most accounts. 60 fps is accepted but downsampled in the feed. Don't shoot above 30.
Yes — indirectly. Captions raise watch-time and completion rate, both of which feed TikTok's For You ranking. They also help TikTok's content classifier index your video correctly.
17 CPS for adult English content (Netflix). 15 CPS for the BBC. 12 CPS for children's content. Short-form social can push to 20 CPS.
About 160–200 WPM for adult viewers. Children's content drops to ~140 WPM. WPM is a sanity check; CPS is the primary metric.
SRT for almost everything: video editors, YouTube, Vimeo, every major platform. VTT only when you're embedding video on a website with HTML5 <track>.
SRT (SubRip Subtitle) is a plain-text subtitle format with numbered cues and HH:MM:SS,mmm timestamps. It's the most universal subtitle format.
VTT (WebVTT) is the W3C standard subtitle format for HTML5 <video> elements. Browsers use VTT to render caption tracks; it's almost identical to SRT but adds a 'WEBVTT' header and dot-separated timestamps.
TTML (Timed Text Markup Language) is an XML-based subtitle format used in broadcast and streaming. DFXP (Distribution Format Exchange Profile) is an older TTML profile. Both are interchangeable in most workflows — convert to SRT for editing.
Yes. YouTube indexes uploaded SRT/VTT transcripts in its search index. A clean transcript lifts discoverability 20–30% over auto-captions.
9:16 (1080×1920). Shorts is vertical-only. Anything wider gets letterboxed and won't appear in the Shorts swipe feed.
Up to 3 minutes (180 seconds) for vertical or square uploads after October 15, 2024. Most high-retention Shorts are 20–45 seconds.
Burn them in for short-form social (TikTok, Reels, Shorts, X). Deliver SRT for long-form (YouTube, Vimeo, courses, sermons).
AI captioning: 10–60 seconds for a 5–20 minute video. Manual captioning: 4–6 minutes per minute of video. Hybrid (AI + edit): 30 seconds plus 5–10% of video length.
Burned-in captions: no, the file is sealed. Soft captions (SRT/VTT on YouTube, Vimeo): yes, replace the SRT in the platform's caption settings.
CapCut does not export a standalone SRT file — captions are burned into the exported MP4. To get an SRT, generate the transcript with an external tool (SoCaptions, Whisper) before importing into CapCut.
Two approaches: burn them in (subtitles become part of the video pixels — permanent, always visible) or add a soft subtitle track (SRT/VTT stored alongside the MP4 — toggleable). Use burn-in for social, soft tracks for YouTube and Vimeo.
Not on their own. WCAG and ADA require toggleable closed captions. Burned-in captions are visible to everyone, but you also need to ship a separate SRT/VTT for compliance.
SDH (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-hearing) are same-language subtitles that include non-speech audio cues — music, sound effects, speaker IDs — following accessibility conventions. They're the streaming-era equivalent of closed captions.