Most viewers watch short videos with the sound off. If your video is in Urdu and has no captions, a lot of them scroll past before they hear a word. Captions fix that, and they also help people who are hard of hearing, who are in a noisy place, or who simply read faster than they listen.
Urdu captions have a few problems English captions do not. The text runs right to left, the usual fonts draw it badly, and the words must appear exactly when they are spoken. This guide walks through doing it properly, from upload to export.
Before you start
You need three things: the video file, a clear voice track, and a rough idea of the look you want. Clean audio matters more than anything else. If a background track is louder than the voice, the speech engine has a harder time and you will spend longer fixing words.
Tip: record the voice first
If you edit the video yourself, add music after the captions are done, or keep it low. Captions made from a clean voice track need far fewer corrections.
Steps
- Upload your video to CapsField. Phone videos, screen recordings and exports from any editor work.
- Choose the spoken language. Pick Urdu if the speech is Urdu, even if a few English words appear in it.
- Choose how the words are written. Native script gives you proper Urdu letters. Roman gives you Urdu written in English letters, which some audiences prefer for comments and Reels.
- Let the transcription run, then play the video and read along. Fix any wrong word directly in the caption list. Names, places and brand names are the most common mistakes.
- Check the timing on the timeline. Each word should appear when it is spoken. Drag the edges of a word or a line to make it shorter or longer.
- Pick a caption style from the templates, then adjust the font, size, colour and position.
- Export the video, or download the captions as a subtitle file to use in another editor.
Make Urdu look right
Urdu is usually set in Nastaliq, the slanted script people expect in books and on screen. A plain sans-serif font makes it look cold and sometimes hard to read, so use a Nastaliq face. CapsField picks one for Urdu text automatically, and you can change it in the style settings.
Two details that are easy to miss:
- Direction. Lines read right to left, and the animation should too. Words should enter from the right, not the left.
- Size. Nastaliq looks smaller than Latin text at the same size, so check on a real phone before you export.
Keep captions readable
Good captions are short. Aim for one or two lines with a few words each, and avoid filling the screen. Use a high contrast colour, such as white or yellow text on a dark shadow, and keep the text away from the edges.
On Reels, Shorts and TikTok, the bottom of the screen is covered by buttons and the caption of the post. Turn on the safe zone guide in the editor so your captions sit above that area.
Check with the sound off
Before you publish, watch the whole video once with the volume down. If you can follow it from the captions alone, they are doing their job.
Mixed languages
Many creators speak a mix of Urdu, Hindi and English in the same sentence. Choose the main language of the video, then fix the few words that come out wrong. If you want everything in Roman letters, choose the Roman option so Hindi and Urdu words use the same spelling.
Common mistakes
- Letting the transcript through without reading it. Always play the video once and fix the words.
- Using a small, thin font. It looks fine on a computer and disappears on a phone.
- Putting captions over the part of the screen the app covers.
- Showing too many words at once, so people read ahead of the speaker.
Try it
You can add Urdu captions to your first video for free. Start here, or look at the free video tools if you only need to convert, trim or compress a file first.
