How do I generate and translate captions in WeVideo?

WeVideo Support
WeVideo Support
  • Updated

WeVideo Multimedia Creation’s automatic captions feature lets you generate captions directly from spoken audio. You can generate these captions either by adjusting your settings when you export the project or by creating the captions after exporting

In this article:

Before You Start

  • Your video must contain clear spoken audio; background noise can affect accuracy.
  • You need edit access to the project.
  • Automatic captions and translation availability may depend on your plan.

How It Works

When You Export the Project

The Export button in the WeVideo Multimedia Creation editor.

Click Export in the top-right corner of the window to start exporting the project.

 

The export settings for the project

Adjust the export settings, select to upload captions or auto-generate captions with the captions generator, and click Export to export the project.

After completing the export, the generated captions will be available with the video. Please see the section below for more information on accessing, editing, and exporting the generated captions.

After Exporting the Project

The exports tab on the left sidebar is marked as the first step, and the exported project is marked as the second step.

Find the export from the Exports page in the Multimedia Creation space and click on it to view it.

The captions option for the exported project.

Click the Captions button to open the captions panel.

 

The auto-generated captions option for the exported project.

Click the Auto-generate captions button to generate the captions.

The progress bar of the subtitles-generating process.

Wait for the captions to process. The processing time will depend on the video time. You can leave this page and return later after processing is complete.

The generated subtitles in WeVideo

After completing the process, the generated captions will be available with the video. Please see the section below for more information on accessing, editing, and exporting the generated caption.

Access, Edit, and Export the Generated Captions

The closed captions button in the WeVideo media player

While watching the export, you can access the generated captions. Viewers can enable the captions by clicking the closed captions button on the player. Users can select which captions to display when multiple captions are attached to the export.

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To edit the captions, open the export and click the captions button to open the captions panel.

The subtitles editor.

Click on the captions to edit them for errors or typos.

Translate captions 

You can also translate those captions into supported languages directly in the editor. This makes videos more accessible and searchable for multilingual audiences without exporting to another tool.

The translate button is marked as the first step, the Add translate option as the second, and then the user can select a language from a list of supported languages.

To translate the generated captions into another language, click the Translation button, choose the Add Translation option, and select the language from the list to translate the captions. All the captions will be attached to the exports, and users can choose which captions to display when they watch the shared video with the WeVideo player.

Download Captions

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To export the generated captions, click the Download button and select one of the download options. Users can download them as separate files or combine the captions with the video into a single file. When downloaded as separate files, the captions will be saved as a VTT (Video Text Track) file alongside the video file. If the captions and video are combined, the captions will be burned into the video as a single file. The burn-in process occurs after selecting the download option; therefore, it will not affect the exports in your account, and you can choose different options for each download.

After downloading the captions, users can upload both the video and captions to their preferred viewing platform.

How accurate are the generated captions in WeVideo?

Note: Because of inherent variations in audio quality, speaker traits, and environments, no speech-to-text service guarantees the accuracy of its output. While there are third-party leaderboards and rankings, these are based on test data, and real-world performance may vary.

WeVideo uses the Whisper model for auto-captioning for Educational license (Instructor and Organization) users and Enterprise license users, and the AWS Transcribe service for Individual Creator or Teams license users. In the test environment, AWS Transcribe achieves a Word Error Rate of approximately 12–15% on clean, general-purpose English audio under optimal conditions, corresponding to roughly 85–88% word-level accuracy. The Whisper model achieves a similar result. Please note that results may vary depending on audio quality, language, and context.

To ensure accuracy, WeVideo provides an in-platform captions editor that lets users easily edit and correct generated captions when needed.


For more support and troubleshooting, visit our Help Center. New to WeVideo? Try for free or contact our team to learn more.

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