Ultimate Guide to Adding Subtitles in Davinci Resolve

If you’d like to edit programs and videos, DaVinci Resolve is a great choice. It’s equipped with the latest tools that help video editors integrate graphics, render images, customize colors, optimize sound and add subtitles to videos. In this step-by-step guide, we’ll show you how to add subtitles in DaVinci Resolve.

What are subtitles?

Subtitles are text, usually positioned at the bottom of your video, created from the dialogue of videos or movies. Thanks to subtitles, members of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, or viewers who don’t want to turn up the volume, can follow what’s happening and what’s being said.

The benefits: your content gets discovered by more people on social media, you reach a wider audience, you improve SEO, and you attract more foreign viewers.

Adding subtitles with DaVinci Resolve

Whether it’s a short video or a full-length program, subtitles help you target a global audience, including viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing or don’t speak the video’s language. DaVinci Resolve offers both manual and imported (SRT) ways to do it.

Manual creation of subtitles

• 1. Add a subtitle track. In the timeline, right-click the track area and choose ‘Add Subtitle Track’.
• 2. Add a subtitle. Move the cursor to where a dialogue starts, right-click the subtitle track and select ‘Add Subtitle’.
• 3. Type the caption. Enter your caption text in the Inspector panel.
• 4. Adjust the length. Match the subtitle to the audio section and adjust its duration.
• 5. Check against the audio. Listen to the section and refine the caption text.
• 6. Style the font. Use the Style tab in the Inspector to set font, size, color and background; tick ‘Use Track Style’ to apply it everywhere. Pick an easily readable font.
• 7. Repeat. Move to the next audio line and click ‘Add New’ until the video is fully subtitled.

Add SRT subtitles to DaVinci Resolve

Manual subtitling is straightforward but laborious. The faster option: generate a subtitle file first and import it.

Getting SRT subtitles with Amberscript

With Amberscript you upload your video and choose machine-made subtitles, or let our team of professional subtitlers take the lead, with translated subtitles also available. The automatic generator delivers a first draft within minutes, which you refine in the online editor: fix punctuation, align the subtitles to your video, and highlight parts of the text.

Happy with the result? Download it as Text, SRT, VTT or EBU-STL, with optional timestamps and speaker distinction. For complex or high-volume content, our professional subtitlers deliver 99%+ accuracy in 18+ languages.

Add your subtitles to DaVinci Resolve

• 1. Import and select. Go to File, click ‘Import’ and then ‘Subtitle’. Navigate to your .srt file; once imported it appears in the media pool.
• 2. Drag and drop. Drag the SRT from the media pool onto your timeline where the dialogue starts, and make minor syncing adjustments.
• 3. Restyle. Imported subtitles don’t retain styling, so restyle them via the Inspector as described above.
• 4. Final check. Correct any recognition mistakes and finalize your subtitles in the Captions section of the Inspector.

Export options

• Separate file. Most convenient for viewers: they can toggle subtitles on or off (upload the file separately on YouTube).
• Burn subtitles into the video. Permanently places subtitles in the picture. Ideal for platforms like Facebook or Instagram where videos autoplay on mute.
• Embedding. Mainly for broadcast use, and only with supported file formats. On the Deliver page, open ‘Subtitle Settings’, choose ‘Export Subtitles’ and your method, then render.

How to burn closed captions in DaVinci Resolve

• Import your video into DaVinci Resolve.
• Create a subtitle track: right-click in the timeline and select ‘New Track > Subtitle’.
• Add captions: click ‘Add Subtitle’ and enter the text per line; drag the markers to adjust timing.
• Customize the appearance via the Inspector panel: font style, size, color.
• Export with burn-in: on the Deliver tab, choose your format and select the ‘Burn In’ option for subtitles.

Want to know more about closed captions and how they differ from subtitles? Read our extensive blog post about it.

A couple of tips to consider

• Subtitle last. Add subtitles at the very end of your edit; earlier edits would mean re-shuffling all subtitles.
• Follow industry standards. Keep it to a maximum of two lines of roughly 42 characters each, on screen just long enough to read comfortably.

Conclusion

Adding subtitles in DaVinci Resolve is a seamless process with high-quality results. Beyond subtitling, Resolve offers color enhancement, rendering and audio tools, making it a standalone solution for professional video editing. With subtitles in place, your content travels further: more platforms, more countries, more viewers.