Burned-in subtitles vs soft subtitles
One is painted into the frames, the other rides alongside as a file. How each works, what each costs you, and how to produce both.
Burned-in: part of the picture
Burned-in subtitles are rendered into the video frames themselves. Clipy draws your reviewed captions into an MP4 on your device, so the text appears on every player, every platform and every re-upload, and nobody can switch it off.
The trade is flexibility: the words are pixels now, so fixing a typo means editing and rendering again.
Soft: a file beside the video
Soft subtitles are a separate SRT or VTT file with the same timings. A player or platform loads the file and renders the text over the video, which keeps the words editable and lets viewers turn them off.
The trade is reach: the subtitles only appear where the file is actually loaded, so a bare MP4 shared on its own plays without text.
Choosing and troubleshooting
Short vertical video aimed at feeds usually wants burned-in text, because it survives every repost. Archival or editable work usually wants soft subtitles. Clipy supports both from one transcript: burn to MP4 or export SRT and VTT.
If burned text looks wrong, remember the editing preview is approximate and check the rendered file. If soft subtitles never appear, confirm the player actually loaded your subtitle file rather than generating its own.
Common questions
Can one transcript produce both?
Yes. Burned-in rendering and SRT or VTT export both read from the same edited transcript, so you can produce each without redoing your edits.
Which is better for social media?
Burned-in captions, in most cases: they are part of the picture and appear everywhere the video plays, including places that never load a subtitle file.
Try the workflow
Prepare your own file and review the result before using it.
Open the related Clipy tool