How to Add Captions & Subtitles to a Facebook Video

Captions on Facebook videos boost accessibility and engagement. Did you know that 85% of all Facebook videos are watched without sound? That is a ton of viewers that are going to want your video content captioned.

Ready to get started? Here are the steps it takes to add captions to your Facebook video!

How to Add Captions and Subtitles to Facebook Videos

1. Post your video to Facebook without captions

2. Paste a URL to your Facebook Video

Paste the URL of your Facebook video here. Then go through the Rev caption/subtitle order process.

3. Rev will deliver your caption or subtitles file shortly. You’ll receive an email when it’s complete

4. Once you have your Rev caption file, click “Edit this video” on your Facebook video

You may have to expand the post or hover over the thumbnail to see the option. You’ll see a tab that says “Captions.” Click that and you’ll see the options to either upload your SRT file or turn on the auto-captioning we mentioned earlier. Click “Upload file.”

5. Confirm that your captions file meets Facebook’s captions file naming convention

The Facebook naming convention looks like this: filename.[language code]_[country code].srt. If you got your caption file from Rev, you don’t have to worry! Just upload.

6. Toggle the captions on and off, and review for quality

Need subtitles in other languages besides English? Rev’s subtitle translation service translates English videos and adds subtitles in a variety of languages. This is great if you’re trying to reach customers in other languages.

Why Add Captions & Subtitles to Facebook Videos?

For these reasons and others, many vloggers and other video content producers opt to add their own captions to Facebook videos. But that caption integration requires some nuances. Facebook puts the burden of identifying the language in the captions on their users, as well as adding the country code for the language’s nation of origin. Even if you only have one captions file and Facebook knows your preferred language, the site doesn’t automatically make the connection.

Facebook’s Caption Requirements

Facebook requires you to put a language suffix on all your caption files, even if your language is English. Someone in the US uploading a captions file in Spanish to a Facebook video needs to title their file something like “captions.es_LA.srt”. This is because even though the speaker is in the US, and so are their viewers, the Spanish language didn’t originate here, so “LA” is the generic country code for Spanish.

When you have to upload captions to multiple versions of a video, or just simply aren’t paying attention, this small element can become a bit of a hassle. That’s why we offer the option of delivering your captions files with this save name already applied at no extra charge. Of course, since other sites don’t have the same rules, you’ll be able to use the file on all your channels at once, without having to remember to rename it.

This might seem like a small detail, but it’s got lots of our faithful customers excited that one less task is on their plate. Here’s what our customers are saying:

Wrap-up

Technology is always evolving, and maybe soon adding closed captions to Facebook videos won’t be a task. Until then, we’ve got your back.

Rather have the captions added straight to your videos? Rev now offers burned-in captions (open captions). Just check the “burned-in captions” box at checkout and you’ll receive a video with permanent, hard-coded captions added straight to your videos. Also available for foreign language subtitles!

More Social Media Caption Options