How to add captions to a Reel or Short with Captionwale
By Captionwale · 6 November 2026
The route from a raw clip to a captioned MP4: upload it, pick the spoken language and script, find your way round the editor, then export for Reels or Shorts.
What you need before you start
A finished cut of the clip, a browser and a few spare minutes. Captionwale runs inside the browser at its editor, on a laptop or on a phone, so there is nothing to install. Opening the editor asks you to sign in, because the transcription minutes that come with your plan are counted against your account.
Trim the clip to its final length before uploading. Captions are timed against the exact file you hand over, and each plan sets the longest clip it will accept: 1 minute on Free and 5 minutes on the paid plans. If you recorded a long take for a short Reel, cut it down to the part you will actually post, and you spend fewer minutes too.
Uploading and telling it what was said
Drop the video into the editor or pick it from your files. Any common video format works, up to 2 GB, and 4K footage straight off a phone is fine. Before anything is transcribed, a small window asks you two questions.
The first is What language is spoken? Choose the language from the list, or leave it on Auto-detect and let the model identify it; pick one by hand only when the guess comes back wrong. The second is the writing system, which decides how the words will look on screen rather than what they say.
Press Generate transcription and give it a moment. A short clip usually comes back in around thirty seconds. The length of the audio is taken off your monthly transcription minutes, and every word arrives with its own timing, so a template can follow the speaker one word at a time.
Native script, Roman letters or English
The writing system is the setting first-time users most often get wrong. There are three options, and the script guide goes deeper into the trade-offs:
- Native script writes the language in its own letters: Devanagari for Hindi, the Tamil script for Tamil, the Gujarati script for Gujarati. Choose it when your viewers read that script without effort.
- Romanised (Latin) spells the same words in English letters. It is the usual pick for Hinglish, since most people who watch Hinglish Reels also type Hindi in Roman letters every day.
- English translation turns the speech into English instead of writing it down as spoken. It helps when a large part of your audience does not speak the language of the clip.
- A clip in English, or in Urdu, offers only the first option, so the choice does not come up.
Finding your way round the editor
When the transcript is ready, the editor opens with the captions already playing on your video. A new project starts on a template the Free plan can export, so nothing is locked on your first attempt.
The screen has five parts. A rail of tools runs down the left edge, Captions among them, and beside it a panel that changes with the tool you choose. The video plays in the middle on a dotted canvas. On the right is the style panel, with a Templates tab for picking a look and a Text tab for adjusting the caption's font, size, colours, outline, shadow, position and animation. The timeline runs along the bottom.
The bar at the top holds the project name, a chip showing the language and script you chose, the export resolution, the transcription time left this month and, at the far right, the Export button. The question-mark button replays the short tour whenever you want it.
A quick pass before you export
Five checks catch most problems, and none of them spends a minute of transcription:
- Watch the clip once from start to end and note any caption that reads wrong. Names, brands and figures are where speech recognition slips most often.
- Correct those words in the Captions panel. Editing words and timing walks through each tool there.
- Choose a look in the Templates tab, where every card previews on your own clip. Choosing a template explains the families.
- Check the frame shape above the preview, and switch on the safe-area overlay to see where the app's buttons will land.
- Scrub to the busiest moment of the video and make sure no caption is sitting across a face.
Exporting and posting
Press Export. Captionwale builds the finished video right there in your browser, so leave the tab open until it is done; a dialog shows the progress and a rough time remaining. When it finishes, the MP4 downloads, and if your browser blocks that, the dialog gives you a button to save the file yourself.
Free exports carry the Captionwale badge in the middle of the frame, and the preview shows it before you export, so it never comes as a surprise. Paid plans export without it. Then post the file to Instagram or YouTube as you normally would; the captions are part of the picture and need no separate upload. Exporting at the right quality covers resolution and each export step.
Questions
Can I caption a clip longer than 5 minutes?
Not in one go. 5 minutes is the longest single clip any plan transcribes, and Free stops at 1 minute. Cut a longer video into parts and caption each part as a project of its own.
Does fixing the captions use up my minutes?
No. Minutes go only on transcribing a clip. Correcting words, swapping templates and exporting again cost nothing, while transcribing the same clip a second time does use minutes.
Is my video uploaded to Captionwale?
The sound is sent off for transcription so that the captions can be written. The export is a different matter: it is rendered in your browser and the original is not uploaded for it, which is why the tab must stay open while it runs.
Can I do all of this on a phone?
Yes. The editor works in a phone's browser, with the preview above and the tools in a sheet beneath it. The export runs on the phone itself, so keep the browser open until the download appears.