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>.
Subtitles transcribe spoken dialogue. Closed captions also describe non-speech audio (music, sound effects, speaker IDs) and are the accessibility standard.
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.
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.
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.