YouTube Auto Dubbing: How It Works and When to Upload Your Own Dub

What automatic dubbing is

Automatic dubbing creates AI-voiced audio tracks in other languages for your videos. Viewers choose a language from the audio track option in the player's settings, and the video's description notes that it's auto-dubbed. For some languages YouTube applies Expressive Speech, which tries to carry over the tone and emotion of the original. According to YouTube's help centre, it's turned on by default for eligible creators. Google has said the feature is open to all creators, with 27 dubbing languages on YouTube's side and Expressive Speech in 8 of them, including Hindi.

Languages for Hindi and English channels

YouTube publishes the pairs it supports. The ones that matter most for Indian channels:

English videos

Dubbed into Hindi (with Expressive Speech), Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi, and into Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian

Hindi videos

Dubbed into English (with Expressive Speech) and Bengali

YouTube is the only route in this guide for Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Punjabi and Bengali dubs; mydubly's only Indian language is Hindi. Check YouTube's help page for the current list, since pairs are added over time.

Why a video doesn't get dubbed

YouTube's help centre lists the reasons a video isn't eligible:

• It's longer than 120 minutes.
• It has little or no speech, or is mostly music.
• Its language isn't supported or couldn't be detected.
• The speech is too fast.
• It has Content ID claims or copyrighted material.

If the option is missing entirely, check that your channel is eligible and that the setting below is on.

Turning it off, or reviewing dubs first

In YouTube Studio go to Settings, then Channel, then Advanced settings, and find Automatic dubbing. "Allow automatic dubbing" switches it on or off for future uploads, and "Manually review dubs before publishing" holds each dub until you've listened to it and published it yourself. Reviewing is worth doing for anything with names, numbers, brand terms or jokes. An auto dub on a single video can be deleted from that video's Languages page, which is also where you replace it with your own.

Auto dub or your own dub?

YouTube's multi-language audio feature lets you upload a dubbed track you made yourself. Per YouTube's help page, it's available to creators with access to Advanced features and works on new and existing videos. In YouTube Studio on a computer: open Languages, pick the video, choose Add language, click Add next to Dub, and upload an audio-only file roughly the same length as the video. If an automatic dub already exists in that language, delete it first.

Automatic dub

Free, made for you, on by default; fixed language pairs; you can review but not edit the voice

Your own dub

You choose the tool, voice and script, and can check every line; needs Advanced features and an audio file you make

Your own dub makes sense when the auto dub isn't offered for your video or language pair, when you want each speaker to keep their own voice, when your video has several speakers or specialist terms, or when you want to hear and approve the exact audio before viewers do.

Making your own Hindi or English dub with mydubly

1. Drop your video on the AI dubbing page, switch on "Full translation output" and choose Hindi, English or another of the 19 voice languages.
2. Press "Translate video". Each speaker, up to 8, is dubbed in a copy of their own voice; music and effects are kept.
3. Use "Download translated audio" for the M4A track. It runs the full length of your video, so it lines up with YouTube's timeline.
4. Upload it in YouTube Studio under Languages, Add language, Dub.
5. Add translated subtitles as a separate subtitle track, and translate the title and description too.

A 12-minute video costs 600 credits (60¢, ₹51) to dub; a 30-minute video costs 1,500 credits ($1.50, ₹127.50). Paid top-ups open soon, charged in Indian rupees through Cashfree Payments (UPI, cards or netbanking), from ₹85 for 1,000 credits; until then, the 100 free credits are what you can use. The Hindi guide adding a Hindi audio track on YouTube walks through the Studio steps in Hindi, and YouTube multi-language audio covers planning a multilingual channel.

Before you publish a dub, auto or your own

• Listen to the opening minute and any part with names, prices or technical terms.
• Check Hindi gender agreement: a woman speaking should use feminine verb forms.
• Tell viewers the audio is AI-generated; YouTube marks auto dubs, and a line in the description does the same for your own.
• Dub only content you own or have permission to translate, and only voices of people who agreed to be dubbed.

Using the tool on this page

• The spoken language is detected automatically; you select the output language — the spoken language itself for an untranslated transcript, or another language for a translation. Files can be up to 2 hours long.
• Only the audio is sent for processing — the video stays on your device — and audio and text are deleted within 30 minutes of delivery (how files are protected).
• You can download a translated video that keeps your music and effects, the translated audio as M4A, a transcript and subtitles (SRT and VTT). Every output, step and limit is explained on the AI dubbing page.