How to transcribe and subtitle your Facebook videos

Whether you’re an individual, influencer, or business, Facebook is the premier social media platform to connect with a global audience. Everyone knows that you can share almost any type of content, including videos, on Facebook. But, did you know that Facebook even allows sharing videos with closed caption subtitles to improve the accessibility of your video content?

Below, we’ll show you exactly how you can create and upload subtitled videos to Facebook using Scriptme.io.

How to transcribe and subtitle your videos for Facebook:

• First of all, log into your Scriptme.io account. In the dashboard, click the “Upload file” button to upload your video to Scriptme:

• In the upload file window, you can either drag and drop the video file from anywhere on your computer into the upload field or click “Browse file” and manually navigate to the video file using the file explorer:

• Once you’ve found and chosen the video file you want to upload, you’ll see it listed in the file upload window:

Before proceeding, make sure that you have the correct original language selected. You can either transcribe the video first or directly create subtitles for it. 

We recommend this approach because you can also generate subtitles from your transcription while the opposite is not possible. Click “Finish” to start uploading the video.

• You can track the progress of the upload and transcription process under the “Actions” field in your Scriptme.io dashboard:

• When the “Actions” status changes to “See transcription,” you’ll know that it has been completed successfully. When you’re ready, you can click this button to see your video transcription:

The Transcription dashboard is where you can preview, edit, and change the settings of your Scriptme.io video transcriptions. If you’re interested in using this feature, you can follow the in-depth guide that we’ve created here.

• Next up, we will generate Subtitles from your transcription. To do this, just click the “Convert to subtitles” button:

• You’ll then need to configure basic settings for your subtitle file, such as whether you want the subtitles to span 1 or 2 lines and how many characters should display at one time:

These settings are already pre-set according to best practices for video subtitles. However, you can adjust them freely to suit your preferences.

Scriptme.io will now process and generate the subtitles for your video. Once it’s completed, you’ll be taken to the Subtitle edit dashboard. 

Aside from editing the subtitles for accuracy, you can make design changes to the subtitles as well. By switching to the “Style” tab, you’ll be able to change the font family, size, color, and styling as well as the background color, positioning, and formatting of the text:

If you want to learn how to use this page to edit and customize your subtitles, just follow our guide.

• If you’re happy with your subtitles, you can click the “Export” button to proceed:

Facebook supports uploading videos with embedded (burned-in) subtitles as well as attaching closed caption subtitles to your videos in the subrip (.SRT) file format.

In the following steps, we’ll show you how to do both.

To create and download a video with embedded subtitles:

• In the “Export video with subtitles window”, you’ll see two separate “Export” buttons. Click the upper “Export” button underneath the preview window:

• Scriptme.io will now start processing your video:

And, that’s it! You can now preview the video with embedded subtitles and download it to your computer.

Now, we’ll go  through the steps to create closed caption subtitles for your video:

• From the drop-down, make sure that you select the closed caption format of your choice. For this guide, choose .SRT as it’s the most commonly used format for subtitles and the only one currently supported by Facebook. 
• Then, click the second “Export” button to proceed:

The .SRT file will then be downloaded to the default download folder on your computer. Confirm that you have the file saved on your computer before proceeding. 

How to upload your subtitled video to Facebook:

First, let’s go through the steps of uploading a video with embedded subtitles to Facebook:

• Log in to your Facebook using your web browser. Click the “Photo/Video” option in the new post panel in the middle of the screen:

• In the “Create Post” click the “add photos/videos” button to find the video using your file explorer or drag and drop it into the area:

• If you want to post a video with embedded subtitles, you can go ahead and add a description and click the “Post” button to upload it to your Facebook feed. If you want to upload closed captions for your video, click the “Edit” button first and continue to the next step.

• From here, expand the “Add captions” field. Then, click the “Upload” button and find and upload the .SRT file you created using Scriptme.io above:

NOTE: Facebook requires your closed caption filenames to follow a certain format, e.g., “filename.en_US.srt.” This is to distinguish between different language subtitle bands.

• Facebook will tell you if the subtitles were successfully uploaded. You can then click “Save” to proceed:

• With your subtitles added, you can now click “Post” to submit the video to your timeline.

Congratulations! If you’ve followed these steps, then you know how to create videos with embedded or closed caption subtitles using Scriptme.io and post them to your Facebook account!