Caption a long video, free — with no time limit

How to caption a long video

A podcast, a lecture or a webinar is where most caption tools stop — a free tier runs out, or an upload of several gigabytes has to succeed first. Neither applies here. The steps are the same as for a short clip, with two things worth planning for.

1. 1

   Open the editor and add the file. Drop the recording in, however large it is. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no transfer to sit through and no size limit to run into — the browser reads it from disk as it goes.

2. 2

   Pick the language and start it. Choose the spoken language, then press Generate captions. The model downloads once, on the first run only; every long video after that goes straight to transcribing.

3. 3

   Leave the tab open while it works. Transcription runs on your own CPU, so a long recording genuinely takes a while, and the work lives in the tab — keep it open rather than closing it or letting the machine sleep. It does not need the network once the model is cached.

4. 4

   Edit, then take what you need. Fix any names or jargon in the caption list, then either export an MP4 with the captions burned in, or save the transcript as .srt or .vtt to hand to another editor or a publishing platform.

Why other tools cap video length

The reason is architectural, not generous. Cloud caption tools rent GPUs by the minute, so every minute of your video costs them money — which is why their plans meter you by video length, upload size or credits. AI Caption Cut renders on your own device, so a longer video costs us nothing. There is no meter to run.

That is why the cap tracks the price so neatly: the limit is not a product decision about what you need, it is their invoice.

What you can caption

Podcasts and interviews, webinars and talks, tutorials and course lessons, sermons, lectures, long-form YouTube — there is no length at which the app refuses.

You can also caption a long video and then cut it down: Auto-cut removes silences and filler words across the whole timeline in one pass, which is usually what a 40-minute recording needs before it becomes clips.

The honest trade-off

On-device is free and private, but it is your processor doing the work. A cloud service with a warehouse of GPUs will transcribe a 1-hour video faster than your laptop will. Here, a long recording takes real minutes and the tab needs to stay open.

In exchange: no upload, no account, no per-minute bill, no cap, and it keeps working offline.

How it works

Open the site and pick your video — it is read from your disk, not copied anywhere. Captions are generated on-device with word-level timing, so karaoke highlighting lines up. Style them, cut the dead air, and export an MP4 back to your disk.

Free exports are 480p with a small watermark and are unlimited. A one-off payment removes the watermark on that video at full 1080p.

Questions

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