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Adding text to your videos is a great way to add flair, personality, and offer your viewers added interest or context. And, obviously, adding captions is a must if you want to ensure your content is accessible to all kinds of viewers.
Video creators should have the freedom to customize and play with the text they add to their videos. That’s why using the right video editor is so important.
This blog walks you through the best desktop and mobile apps for adding text to your videos. And we’ll also introduce you to why Riverside is the safest bet for ultra-accurate captions.
TLDR:
- You can add text to your videos for two reasons: to make your content more accessible through captions or to emphasize and even add extra context for your viewers.
- The biggest priority when adding text to your videos is customizability. You want to be able to personalize the look, size and placement of any text that appears in your video.
- Riverside’s AI powered transcription tool produces ultra-accurate transcriptions in no time. And with the new text-based editor, you can use the transcript to edit your video.
How can I add text to a video?
Adding text to your videos is easy, as long as you’re using the right software for the job. There are two types of text that you can add to videos:
- Text at specific moments for emphasis or context. For example, this could be someone’s name, title, or a location name.
- Captions that convey your video’s dialogue and other audio in written form. You can choose between open or closed captions.
The workflow for adding these two different types is different. But you can find software that offers native tools for both.
What to consider when choosing a video editor for adding text
Customizability
You want to be able to customize the look, size, and positioning of any text that you add to your video. Look for a video editor that lets you choose your text's color, font, size, and placement.
Automatic captioning
If you want to add captions to your video, you need software that offers automatic, accurate captioning. This will save you a lot of time and make your life much easier. If you’re recording in languages other than English, then you’ll also need an editor that supports multilingual transcription.
Accuracy
This is applicable if you’re captioning your videos with an automatic transcription tool. Find a tool that promises high-accuracy transcription. There is little point in using this kind of feature if you’ll have to spend time trawling through correcting mistakes and errors.
Easy to use
Ease of use is non-negotiable. You want an editor that makes adding text to your video a natural part of your workflow, rather than a time-consuming detour.
4 Best Video Editors to Add Text on PC
iMovie
Price: Free with Apple devices
Compatibility: MacOS and iOS
Automatic captioning: No
iMovie is familiar to Apple device users. It is a free video editor that comes with all Mac computers and is downloadable as an iPhone and iPad app. It’s known for being extremely beginner-friendly and easy to use. For this reason, it may not satisfy the needs of professional and experienced video editors. It doesn’t have captioning feature, but you can easily add text to your videos.
Key Features:
- Easy to use and very beginner friendly
- Add text to any videos
- Customizable fonts, colors and placements
- A number of text (and video) templates
Premiere Pro
Price: $20.99/month
Compatibility: Mac and Windows
Automatic captioning: Yes
Premiere Pro is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite. It’s a high-powered video editor that includes both automatic captioning and text tools.
Key features:
- Automatic transcription and captioning
- Text-based editor
- Customizable text with a wide choice of fonts, colors, sizing, and positioning
- Add transitions to your titles and captions
- Automatically reframe your videos to fit each social platform’s specific dimensions
Final Cut Pro
Price: $299.99
Compatibility: MacOS
Automatic captioning: No
Final Cut Pro is Apple’s video editor for professionals. It offers video editors a vast array of high-caliber video editing features including object tracker and cinematic mode, color grading, motion graphics, and high-speed performance. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t yet have an automatic captioning tool.
Key features:
- Easily add text to any clip
- Customize font, color, and placement of your text
- Add effects or animations to your text
- Ability to add manual captions, ie by typing them yourself clip-by-clip
DaVinci Resolve Studio
Price: $295
Compatibility: Mac and Windows
Automatic captioning: Yes
DaVinci Resolve 18 Studio is an all-in-one video editor that covers all bases. You can edit, color correct, add visual effects, and edit your audio using DaVinci Resolve studio. They recently released an update that came with automatic transcription and captioning. Adding text to your videos is very straightforward. And you have the ability to change how your text looks, where it’s positioned and even animate it.
Key features:
- Text-based editing. Use the automatically generated transcription to edit your video.
- Navigate your video using the transcription by searching for key terms
- Add text and customize placement, font,color and size
- Add animations and effects to your texts and shapes
Canva
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Price: Free (you can upgrade to a paid plan)
Compatibility: Online
Automatic captioning: No
You might know Canva as an online design tool, but they also have a video editing feature. Their video editor is great for adding text to your videos, but you might want to look elsewhere for more ambitious edits. Though there is an option to add auto-generated subtitles to your videos, these are only available when you watch the video in the Canva editor or embedded on Canva designs.
Key Features:
- Customizable text - change the font, color, placement and sizing
- Add animations to your text for extra flair
- Use one of Canva’s many pre-made templates
3 Best Apps to Add Text to Videos on iPhone & Android
Splice Video Editor
Price: Free (with in-app purchases)
Compatibility: iPhone and Android
Automatic captioning: No
Splice video editor calls itself ‘the most powerful mobile video editor around.’ It is a video editing app that is all about making your life easier. From your phone, you can edit professional-looking videos in no time. It comes with a number of editing tools including the ability to slow down or speed up your videos, change colors and backgrounds of your videos, and more.
Key Features:
- Add title slides and text overlays
- Customize your text with different fonts, colors and positioning
- Fade your text in and out
- Chrome Key feature that lets you change the color of items in your video
CapCut
Price: Free (with in-app purchases)
Compatibility: iPhone (and desktop)
Automatic captioning: Yes
CapCut is a popular app for editing videos, especially for social media. It’s an all-in-one solution that offers a whole suite of tools that cover every aspect of the editing process. You can add text to and automatically generate captions for your videos.
Key Features:
- Text-to-speech feature that lets you convert text into natural-sounding audio using template voices
- Auto-caption feature, which automatically generates subtitles for your videos (works for multiple languages)Add text to your videos using CapCut’s templates and effects
- Customize font, style, color, format, spacing, transparency and alignment
Adobe Premiere Rush
Adobe Premiere Rush
Price: Free
Compatibility: Mobile and Desktop (Windows and iOS)
Automatic captioning: No
Adobe Premiere Rush is a free video editing app that works on both desktop and mobile. It works seamlessly across devices which means you can capture footage on your mobile, start your edit on the app and then finish it off on your desktop. There’s no auto-captioning feature, but you can add text and transitions to your videos.
Key Features
- Add transitions and titles
- Customize with your favorite font and style
- Change the size and spacing of your text
- Animate the text you add to your videos
Add text captions to your videos easily with Riverside
If you’re particularly looking to add captions, and not just any text, to your videos, Riverside offers a seamless editing experience.
With Riverside, you gain the ability to record, transcribe and add text to your video in one place. Riverside’s transcription tool offers highly accurate transcription in over 100 languages and you can use your transcript to edit your videos with the text-based editor. You can either burn captions directly into your video, or you can download an SRT or TXT files to use these transcripts as you like.
While you may want to add text to your videos, did you know that you can also edit your video by using text? Riverside’s text-based editor will make your editing workflow as easy as reading through a doc. The editor works with our Ai transcriptions so any words you cut or remove in the transcript, automatically reflects in your video. All your tracks will automatically stay in sync, no matter what changes you make.
Key features of Riverside:
- Record, transcribe and edit your video in one place.
- Multitrack recording which means each participant has their own track.
- Local recording: Riverside records each participant on their own device rather than over the internet. This means you don’t need to worry about weak wifi.
- Automated AI transcriptions with unmatched accuracy straight after recording
- Transcriptions in over 100 languages
- Export in SRT and TXT file formats. SRT file format is perfect for closed captioning and TXT files are perfect for repurposing content into written materials.
- Burn captions directly into your video and position or style them as you wish
- Automated speaker detection to differentiate between each participant in the transcript
- AI Magic Clips creator which makes it easy to produce short-form promotional videos for social media
- Audio editing tools including a text-based editor. This makes editing your videos just like editing a Google doc. You can also optimize your audio quality by removing background noise.
How to Add text captions to your videos on Riverside
Step 1: Choose an existing studio or create a new one to invite guests and record your content. (You can learn more about studios and the recording process here.)
Step 2: Click on ‘view recordings’ when you finish recording session.
You can also do this from the studio dashboard to access previous recordings. Hover over the studio your past recordings are from, and click on ‘View recordings’.
Step 3: Choose the take you want to add captions to, then click on ‘Go to editor’.
Use the Ai transcript and the video timeline to adjust your recording. Any changes you make in your transcript reflect in your video recording and vice versa.
Step 4: Click the captions button in the top toolbar to burn the transcriptions into your video. You can then select what style you like.
To adjust the position of your captions on your video, click on them and drag them around till you’re pleased.
Step 5: End off by polishing your video. You can use our Magic Tools to remove unwanted silences automatically, and you can also remove background noise. Visually, you can adjust your clip layout and even add your own custom background and logo.
Step 6: Export your video clip and share it all over social media!
FAQs on Apps to Add Text to Videos
How do I add text anywhere to a video?
The workflow will look a little different depending on the software you’re using. But as we’ve seen, most video editors have some kind of tool that lets you add customized text to your videos. Try out one of our recommendations above.
How do I add text to a video on my iPhone for free?
The iMovie app is a sure-bet if you want to stick with an Apple app. Otherwise, try CapCut or Adobe Premiere Rush.
What is the best tool to add text to videos?
It depends what kind of text you want to add. If you want to generate ultra-accurate captions, then Riverside is the strongest contender. All you need to do is record your remote video, wait a few minutes for Riverside to generate your transcription, and then export it as an .SRT file. Your ultra-accurate captions will be ready to go.
Can you add text in iMovie?
Yes, you can. Although unfortunately, there is no auto-captioning feature.
How do I cut text out of a video?
Using Riverside’s text-based editor, editing a video is easier than ever. Simply highlight a word or phrase that you don’t want and press the backspace button. Riverside will automatically delete the corresponding section of your video.
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