Add German Subtitles to a Video

Two routes to German text

German words on screen start from one of two sources, and the editor treats them the same once the lines exist.

German speech

Keep "Subtitle language" on "Same as spoken (auto-detect)". Whisper recognises the German and returns short, timed German lines.

Speech in another language

Choose German in the "Subtitle language" menu. The audio is transcribed and the lines come back translated into German, from any of the other 20 languages mydubly understands.

A German SRT or VTT you already have

Switch AI off and import it with "Import SRT / VTT". The text is used as it stands, with no account and no credits.

If the deliverable is a German subtitle file for YouTube or an editing app, not a video with text in the picture, the German subtitle generator is the more direct tool: it hands you an SRT and stops there. This page covers the other job, German words visible in every frame of the MP4 you download, plus an SRT export if you want one too.

Adding German subtitles step by step

1. Open the editor below and choose the video: MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM or MKV.
2. Leave "Write the subtitles automatically with AI" switched on. Set "Subtitle language" to auto-detect when people speak German, or to German when they speak something else.
3. Click "AI subtitles" and sign in with Google if asked. Your browser sends the compressed audio track, never the picture.
4. When the lines arrive, play the video and read each one. Correct spelling in the line list, and drag a line's edges on the timeline where it starts late or lingers.
5. Open the Style tab, choose a preset and look at your longest line in the preview at the size you intend to publish.
6. Click "Render video", confirm the summary, and download the MP4 when the encode finishes. Export SRT as well if you want an editable copy for later.

A 12-minute webinar costs 12 credits (1.2¢) for the AI pass; anything under five minutes is billed at the 5-credit minimum, and new accounts begin with 100 free credits.

When one word fills the line

German builds nouns by gluing them together, and subtitles feel it before any other text does. Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung is 32 letters on its own; Kundenzufriedenheitsumfrage is 27. The editor flags any line over 42 characters and wraps long text automatically, but it wraps at spaces, so a compound of that size leaves almost no room for the words around it.

• Let the compound open the line and keep what follows short, instead of letting it get pushed alone onto a second row.
• Use Split at the playhead to give a crowded sentence two subtitles, each with its own timing, rather than one dense block.
• On vertical video with large text, scan the preview for a word broken in the middle. That only happens when a single word is wider than the whole line, and a smaller size or a wider max line width cures it.
• Where the speaker repeats a long term, a shorter synonym on screen is legitimate. Subtitles condense speech; they are not a court transcript.

More on cutting and joining lines is in split and merge subtitles.

Umlauts, ß and capital letters

Ä, ö, ü and ß belong to the basic Latin character set that every bundled typeface carries, so there is never a reason to fall back on ae, oe, ue or ss in a subtitle. Two details still deserve a look in the preview:

• UPPERCASE turns ß into SS, so Straße appears as STRASSE. That is the long-standing convention for capitals. If your house style prefers the capital ẞ, leave UPPERCASE off and type that line in capitals yourself.
• The dots on Ä, Ö and Ü sit above the height of the other capitals. In two-row subtitles with tight line height, they can touch the outline of the row above; a slightly larger line height clears them.

When you correct text on a keyboard without German keys: on a Mac, holding u down offers ü, and on Windows the US International layout produces ü from a double quote followed by u, and ß from AltGr plus s. The font comparison for subtitles shows how each bundled face handles accented capitals at subtitle sizes.

Du or Sie in a translated track

When the German comes from translation, the form of address is decided for you. English "you" gives no hint whether the speaker would say du or Sie, so a relaxed creator can end up addressing viewers formally, or the choice can drift from one line to the next. Read the finished track once looking at nothing but pronouns and verb endings: du, dich, dir and dein on one side, Sie, Ihnen and Ihr on the other. Decide which your audience expects and make every line agree. Consumer brands talking to younger viewers mostly use du; corporate training, banking and customer support mostly use Sie.

Watch separable verbs as well. In "Wir rufen Sie morgen an" the particle an arrives last, and translated subtitles are split by text length, so the particle can land in the next subtitle and leave the meaning hanging. Merge the two lines when the timing allows. Translated German also tends to run longer than the English it came from, and the per-line timing of translated subtitles is approximate, so expect some "too fast to read" flags. Burning translated subtitles covers that review in more depth, and if you would rather hear German than read it, the German video translator produces a dubbed version.

Troubleshooting German output

• Product and person names: recognition guesses at unfamiliar names. Check every brand mention, especially English names inside German sentences.
• Noun capitals: every German noun starts with a capital letter, and a missed one is the first thing a native reader notices.
• Figures and decimals: German writes 3,5 where English writes 3.5, and 1.000 for a thousand. Make the separators consistent throughout.
• Strong regional accents: broad dialect speech produces more recognition errors than standard German, so budget extra review time for it.
• Music beds: a loud soundtrack under speech garbles words. Retype those lines rather than trusting them.

For a review order that catches most of these quickly, use the checklist for AI-written subtitles.

Beyond the burned-in file

The render gives you one file, named after your video with -subtitled added, at the original resolution and frame rate. Keep the SRT export next to it: it is the version to upload to YouTube or hand to an editor, and the one to reopen if a typo turns up after publishing. If you need the German speech as plain text for a script, minutes or a blog post, German video to text is a cleaner route than copying subtitles line by line. And for the reverse situation, German speakers who need English on screen, see English subtitles on a video.

About the subtitle editor on this page

Opens

MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, MKV videos your browser can decode

Subtitles from

AI (from the speech, optionally translated into one of 21 languages), an SRT or VTT file, or typing them in

You download

An MP4 with the subtitles drawn into the picture at the original resolution and frame rate, plus SRT and VTT files

Cost

Editing, styling, rendering and SRT/VTT export are free, with no account and no watermark. AI subtitles cost 1 credit per minute (5-credit minimum per video); signing in with Google gives 100 free credits and accounts get 10 free credits a day

Privacy

The video never leaves your device and is rendered in your browser. Only for AI subtitles is the audio sent, over HTTPS, and it is deleted within 30 minutes of delivery

Rendering needs

Chrome or Edge 94+, Safari 16.4+, or Firefox 130+ on a computer. Editing and SRT/VTT export work in any current browser