Subtitles for Instagram

How to transcribe and subtitle your social media spot and publish it on Instagram

Instagram is a digital playground for content creators of all types who want to update and engage with their audience. Although video captions might not be that commonplace on Instagram, they are still best practices for creating engaging, accessible, and universal content. Clear and accurate subtitles will help as wide an audience as possible watch and understand your video content, no matter what platform you publish it on.

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

How to transcribe and subtitle your videos for Instagram:

• 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. However, we’ll show you how to create a transcription because you can always generate subtitles from your transcription at any time. 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 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. 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:

Keep in mind that, at this time, Instagram does not support closed captions or uploading subtitles as a separate file. That means you’ll have to embed your subtitles into your actual video. Luckily, this is extremely easy to do using Scriptme.io. 

On top of being able to edit the subtitle text, you can also style your subtitles to look a certain way. 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:

• In the export video with subtitles window, you’ll see two separate “Export” buttons. To embed the subtitles into your video, click the first one right under the preview window:

• That’s all you need to do for now! Scriptme.io will start to process your video with subtitles.
• You can track the progress from this screen 

and download when your video is ready, you can also preview before download.

• You’ll also receive the below email. Click the “Download video” button to go to the finished product:

How to upload your subtitled video to Instagram:

• You can then log in to your Instagram account from your computer. Click the “+” icon in the top-right corner to open the upload window:

• Click “Select from Computer” and look for the video you want to upload:

NOTE: If your video is longer than 1 minute, you’ll need to upload it to IGTV. We’ll detail the steps to do that below at the end of the guide

• Instagram will then ask you to choose the preferred size/orientation for the video:

• At the next step, you can choose a cover image for the video as well as whether or not to enable sound:

• At the final step, you can write a caption, add descriptive alt text, or enable/disable comments for your video. When you’re ready to publish it live, just click “Share:”

• You’ll see this message if your video was successfully uploaded to Instagram:

• Now, you and your audience will be able to watch your subtitled video on Instagram at any time:

How to upload a subtitled video to IGTV:

• If you get this screen, it means your video is too long and you’ll need to upload it via IGTV. To do this, click the “Post to IGTV” button to continue:

• To the left is where you can upload your video. To the right, you can change some basic settings, such as the cover, meta details, etc:

As you can see, you can ask Instagram to auto-generate subtitles. However, these may not be as accurate and will interfere with the embedded subtitles. It’s also preferable to use a tool like Scriptme.io because you have the opportunity to edit and correct your subtitles if needed.

• Click “Post” if you’re ready to publish the video live. You’ll be able to find the video under the IGTV tab of your account dashboard where your audience will be able to view it too:

That’s it! You’ve now successfully transcribed and subtitled a video using Scriptme.io, and published it to your Instagram account. You can now officially start sharing your ultra-accessible video content with the world!