Adding Subtitles

Orshot allows you to automatically generate and overlay subtitles on your videos. You can configure subtitles directly in the Studio editor per page, or pass a subtitleSource via the API at render time.

Page-Level Subtitles#

You can attach subtitles to each page directly in the Studio editor:

• Upload an SRT file — subtitles are used as-is, no transcription needed
• Auto-generate from page audio — if the page has background audio attached, Orshot can automatically transcribe it using OpenAI Whisper

Page subtitles include full styling controls (font, color, background, position) that are configured visually in the editor. These styles are automatically applied during rendering.

API Usage#

You can also provide subtitles via the videoOptions.subtitleSource field in the render API request. This is useful for dynamic subtitle sources or when you want to override page-level settings.

Single Page Templates#

For single-page templates, pass a direct URL string to your source file.

{
  "templateId": "your-template-id",
  "modifications": {
    "text": "Hello World"
  },
  "response": {
    "format": "mp4"
  },
  "videoOptions": {
    "subtitleSource": "https://example.com/audio.mp3",
    "subtitleColor": "#ffffff",
    "subtitleBackground": "rgba(0,0,0,0.5)",
    "subtitleFontSize": "32px",
    "subtitleOffset": "50px"
  }
}

Multi-Page Templates#

For multi-page templates (like carousels turned into video slideshows), you can specify different subtitle sources for each page. Each page's video segment will use its corresponding source.

Pass an array of objects, where each object specifies the page number and the url.

{
  "templateId": "your-multipage-template-id",
  "modifications": { ... },
  "response": {
    "format": "mp4",
    "includePages": [1, 2]
  },
  "videoOptions": {
    "subtitleSource": [
      {
        "page": 1,
        "url": "https://example.com/intro-audio.mp3"
      },
      {
        "page": 2,
        "url": "https://example.com/part-2-audio.mp3"
      }
    ],
    // Styling applies globally to all pages
    "subtitleColor": "#ffffff",
    "subtitleBackground": "#000000"
  }
}

Supported Formats#

The subtitleSource URL can point to:

• Audio Files: .mp3, .wav, .m4a (Automated transcription via OpenAI Whisper)
• Video Files: .mp4, .mov, .webm (Audio extracted & transcribed)
• Subtitle Files: .srt, .vtt (Used directly without transcription)

Styling Options#

When using page-level subtitles, styles are configured visually in the Studio editor. When using API-level subtitles, you can customize appearance with the following videoOptions properties:

Font Support#

You can use any Google Font by specifying its name in subtitleFontFamily. The system will automatically fetch and load it.

"videoOptions": {
  "subtitleFontFamily": "Inter, sans-serif"
}