Split long subtitles into short captions

Why short captions read better on a phone

Subtitle files made for wide video often hold a full sentence per line. On a 9:16 screen that sentence wraps into a block the viewer has to read instead of watch. Short captions, shown a few words at a time near the middle of the frame, keep the eye on your face.

This tool uses the same grouping rules as the Cutroom AI editor: at most 18 characters per caption, a break at every sentence end and comma, and a break wherever the speaker pauses. Each caption stays on screen until the next one starts when the gap is short, so the text never flickers.

How the timing works

An SRT line only says when the whole line starts and ends, not when each word is spoken. The splitter shares the line's time out by word length, so longer words get a little more time. That is close for steady speech and drifts a little when someone speeds up or stops mid-line.

If you need word-exact timing, the editor gets it from the audio: it transcribes your video in the browser and times every word, then builds captions from those times. Open the editor, add the video, and export the .srt from there.

Steps

1. 01Choose your .srt or .vtt file, or paste the text into the box.
2. 02Pick one, two or three words per caption.
3. 03Check the first captions in the preview.
4. 04Download the new file, or copy the text into your editor.