Cover photo by Erick Cerritos on Unsplash
How do you add auto captions in Clipchamp?
Drag your video onto the Clipchamp timeline, click the captions icon or the Captions tab, pick the spoken language and select Transcribe media. Clipchamp generates subtitles with Microsoft’s Azure speech service, shows an editable transcript, lets you restyle the text, and can save an .srt file. One language is transcribed per video, and only clips with speech can be captioned.
Clipchamp is Microsoft’s video editor. Microsoft’s Windows Learning Center says it comes with Windows 11, and it also runs in Edge or Chrome on Windows, Mac and Linux. The steps below follow Microsoft Support’s autocaptions guide for the personal version, checked on 4 November 2026. For other ways to caption a file, see our guide on how to add captions to a video.
How to turn on Clipchamp auto captions, step by step
Clipchamp auto captions take six steps: import, add to the timeline, open captions, choose a language, transcribe and export. Generation time depends on your internet connection and the length of the video.
- Step 1: Open My media on the toolbar, click the drop-down arrow and browse files on your device, or add media from OneDrive or another cloud storage integration.
- Step 2: Drag the video onto the timeline.
- Step 3: Click the captions icon in the video preview, or open the Captions tab in the property panel on the right.
- Step 4: In the pop-up, choose the transcription language and, if you want, tick the box to filter profanity and offensive language. Click Transcribe media.
- Step 5: Captions appear in the preview, and the transcript with timestamps appears in the Captions tab. Double-click any misheard word to rewrite it, or delete it.
- Step 6: Preview the video, then click Export and pick a resolution. The captions are burned into the exported video.
Clipchamp’s pricing page lists watermark-free exports up to 1080p on the free plan; 4K export is a premium feature included with Microsoft 365 Personal and Family.
How do you change the style of Clipchamp captions?
Click the caption text in the preview to open its formatting options in the property panel. Microsoft’s guide lists a font picker (with custom font upload), text colour, preset positions, bold, italics and underline, plus line height, letter spacing, outline and shadow.
- Colour: Microsoft recommends white, or any colour that contrasts with the background, for accessibility.
- Position: keep captions clear of platform buttons on vertical video; our guide to captions cut off on TikTok covers safe zones.
- Outline or shadow: add one if the background is busy or bright.
How do you download Clipchamp captions as an SRT file?
Select the Download captions button in the Captions tab and Clipchamp saves an .srt file to your device. In the work and school version, open the more options menu (...) in the Transcript tab and choose download as .srt. Upload the SRT to YouTube, Facebook or LinkedIn when you want closed captions viewers can switch off.
To hide captions from the video but keep the transcript, toggle Hide captions in video in the property panel. To remove them, click Turn off autocaptions in the Captions tab. Either way, the export will not show the text.
Why are Clipchamp auto captions not working?
Most failures come from the source file or a blocked connection to Azure speech-to-text. Clipchamp only captions clips that contain voice, and it needs to reach Microsoft’s speech service. Microsoft Support suggests these fixes, in order:
- Reload the browser tab or restart the Clipchamp app in Windows.
- Remove the clip from the project, add it again and retry.
- Turn off autocaptions, export the project, import the resulting MP4 and caption that; this helps when the original was a format such as WebM.
- Try a different source video to rule out one bad file.
- Check that a firewall or browser extension isn’t blocking the Azure speech-to-text service, or test on another Wi-Fi network.
If the words come out wrong rather than not at all, our guide to fixing auto captions with wrong words has more tips.
Edited in Clipchamp? Add animated, word-by-word captions to the export in your browser. Try AnimateCaptions free.
Try it freeHow do you get animated captions on a Clipchamp video?
Clipchamp’s autocaptions are static subtitles you can restyle; Microsoft’s guide lists no word-by-word highlight or pop-in presets. For TikTok, Reels or Shorts-style animated captions, export the edit from Clipchamp without autocaptions and add them in a dedicated tool.
AnimateCaptions, a browser-based tool that auto-transcribes your video and burns in animated, word-by-word captions, is one option:
- Step 1: In Clipchamp, hide or turn off autocaptions and export an MP4.
- Step 2: Upload it to AnimateCaptions (.mp4 or .mov, up to 500 MB and 2 minutes; 5 minutes on Pro). Speech is transcribed with Deepgram Nova-3.
- Step 3: Fix any word in the transcript, pick one of 32+ animated styles such as Hormozi or Beast, and drag the captions into position.
- Step 4: Export an MP4 with the captions burned in.
Price (as of 4 November 2026): the free plan covers 3 videos and 10 renders a month at 1080p with a watermark; Creator starts at €6.99/month and Pro at €12.99/month, both without a watermark (see AnimateCaptions pricing). More on the format in our animated captions guide.
When Clipchamp is the better pick: long videos, SRT deliverables, and edits where captions are one step among trimming, text, music and effects. AnimateCaptions does not produce SRT files and is built for short clips.
Clipchamp auto captions: the short version
Put the video on the timeline, open the Captions tab, pick the language, click Transcribe media, correct the transcript, style the text and export, or download the SRT for closed captions. Always review auto captions before publishing; the W3C’s captions guidance notes that automatic captions usually need editing. For screen recordings made in Windows, see how to add captions to a screen recording, or try AnimateCaptions free when you want captions that animate word by word.