This is a practical
guide to generating quick, clean subtitle drafts using Subtitle Edit paired
with Whisper, an AI speech recognition engine. The goal is a smart balance between
speed and quality. Not perfection, but a solid draft that doesn't take forever
to clean up.
If you'd like to watch a tutorial, you can find one here, where the same steps listed below are demonstrated.
Steps 1 and 2 (and part of Step 4) below are one-off procedures you need to complete only once to get ready to start subtitling efficiently. Once they're ready, you will find the actual subtitling process, which consists of loading your video, transcribing it with Whisper, and doing a quick, systematic clean-up of the output, to be quite fast. So, let's get started!
Step 1: Download and Install Subtitle Edit
Head to the Subtitle Edit website and download the latest version. The installation is
straightforward. follow the default prompts and you're good to go.
Step 2: Initial Setup
Before you start any
actual subtitle work, it's worth spending a few minutes configuring the
program. This upfront investment saves a lot of manual work down the line.
General Settings
Go to Options >
Settings and take a look at the General tab. One of the key settings
here is the single line maximum length, which is set to 42 characters by
default. If that works for your project, leave it. If not, adjust it here.
There are also a few profiles available in the dropdown that are worth
exploring.
Tools: The "Do Not Break After" List
This is one of the
most impactful settings for subtitle quality. Still inside Options >
Settings, go to the Tools section and scroll to the auto-break
settings.
Make sure the option "Use
Do Not Break After List" is checked. Then click Edit to open
the word list.
This list tells
Subtitle Edit which words should never appear at the very end of a
subtitle line. The idea is that if a line breaks after a word like
"for," "a," "and," or "the," the
reading experience feels awkward, as those words belong with whatever comes next.
To add words to the
list:
- Type the word in
the input field.
- Click Add
(or press Enter) and it gets added immediately.
You can also use a regular
expression to add multiple words at once, which is useful if you have a
long list of conjunctions, articles, or prepositions to include. Below is a possible regex you can use. You can adapt it according to your needs and paste it after selecting Regular expression.
(?i)(?:\b(?:a|an|the|of|to|in|on|at|by|for|with|from|and|but|or|so|that|if|because|as|than|is|are|was|were|be|been|being|have|has|had|do|does|did|can|could|will|would|should|may|might|must|not|this|these|those|my|your|his|her|our|their|about|into|onto|over|under|after|before|between|among|through|during|without|within|around|across|along|although|though|while|unless|until|since|whether)\b|\b\w+(?:'m|'re|'ve|'d|'ll|'s)\b|n't)\s*$
Video Player Appearance
This is optional, but
worth mentioning: the default subtitle appearance in the built-in player may
not be comfortable to read. In my case, I don't like the default font size and shadow. To change it to suit your preferences, go to the video player settings and
adjust the following:
- Primary color: Yellow works
well for readability.
- Outline: Disabled.
- Shadow: Set to 0.0.
- Opaque box:
Selected.
Again, this is purely a matter of personal preference, but it's nice to know that we can adjust it to whatever is most comfortable for us during
review.
Shortcuts
Go to Options >
Settings > Shortcuts. You don't need to configure everything right now —
the shortcuts will make more sense once you're actually working with subtitles.
We'll come back to the specific ones as they become relevant throughout this
guide.
Step 3: Load Your Video
Go to Video >
Open Video File and load your file. Once the video is loaded, the waveform
should appear at the bottom of the screen. If it doesn't generate
automatically, just click in that area and it will be created. You'll use this
waveform later for fine-tuning timing.
Step 4: Transcribe with Whisper
This is where the AI
does the heavy lifting. Go to Video > Audio to Text.
In the dialog that
opens, configure the following:
Engine: Select Purfview
Faster Whisper XXL. There are several engine options listed, but this one
is significantly faster than the original Whisper and works well on both GPU
and CPU.
Language: Choose your source
language.
Model: This is important.
If you're opening Subtitle Edit for the first time, there won't be any models
listed in the dropdown yet. Here's how to get one:
- Click the three
dots (…) next to the model selector.
- Select a model
from the list.
- Click Download.
As a rule, use at
least the medium model. If your computer can handle it, go for one of the large
models, large or large-v2/v3. The reason: a larger model produces more
accurate transcriptions, which directly translates to less time fixing errors
during cleanup. And because everything runs locally on your computer, nothing is
sent to any server. Once downloaded, the model stays on your computer and
doesn't need to be downloaded again.
Once the model is
downloaded, it will appear in the dropdown. Select it and continue with the
settings below.
Auto-adjust
timings: Make sure this is
selected.
Use
post-processing:
Also select this. Click the Settings button next to it and verify that
at least the first two post-processing options are checked.
Generating Subtitles for a Single Video
Click Generate.
Depending on video length and your hardware, this may take anywhere from under
a minute to several minutes. When it finishes, the transcribed subtitles will
appear in the subtitle list, next to the video player.
Batch Mode: Processing Multiple Videos at Once
If you have several
videos to subtitle, you don't need to process them one by one. In the same
Audio to Text dialog, switch to the Batch tab. Click Add to
select all the videos you want to process, and they'll appear in a list. Click Generate,
and the tool will run transcription for all of them in sequence, producing one
SRT file per video. This is a significant time saver for larger projects.
Step 5: First Cleanup Pass — Unbreak and Auto Break
Once your
transcription is ready, you'll notice the subtitles may have inconsistent or
awkward internal line breaks. Whisper handles the segmentation automatically,
but it doesn't always break lines in the best places. This is where the
"Do Not Break After" list you set up earlier becomes useful.
The fix is a two-step
process applied to all subtitles at once:
- Press Ctrl+A
to select all subtitles.
- Click the Unbreak
button — this removes all line breaks, collapsing every subtitle into a
single line.
- Click the Auto
Break button — this reapplies line breaks according to your configured
rules: the maximum characters per line, and the "Do Not Break
After" word list.
The result is a
consistently formatted set of subtitles where, for example, a line that
previously ended in "a" will now have that "a"
correctly moved to the beginning of the second line within the same subtitle.
Step 6: Fix Transcription Errors
Before moving on to
segmentation cleanup, it's efficient to address systematic transcription errors
first.
For example, if
Whisper transcribed "Claude" as "Cloud" (which can happen
with proper nouns), there may be multiple instances of that error throughout
the file. Use Find and Replace to fix them all at once:
- Press Ctrl+H
to open Find and Replace.
- Type the
incorrect word in the Find field (e.g., "Cloud").
- Type the correct
version in the Replace field (e.g., "Claude").
- Click Replace All.
It's a good habit
to do this early, since fixing one systematic error in bulk takes seconds, while
catching individual instances during manual review takes much longer.
Step 7: Fix Dangling Words with Shortcuts
Now it's time to do a
pass through the subtitle list looking at the end of each subtitle, specifically to identify any "dangling weak words." These are words like
conjunctions, prepositions, or articles ("and," "or,"
"for," "a," "the") that have ended up stranded at
the end of a subtitle line. While the auto break pass handled many of these,
some will still appear between subtitles, i.e., at the end of the second line, rather than within them.
Setting Up the Shortcuts
Go to Options >
Settings > Shortcuts and search for "move." You'll find
several relevant actions:
- Move last word to
next subtitle: Takes the last word of the current subtitle
and moves it to the start of the next one. I like using Alt+W for this, as it's a left-hand shortcut that you can press easily while keeping your right hand on the mouse to navigate the subtitles.
- Move first word
to previous subtitle: The reverse, as it sends the first word of the
current subtitle up to the end of the previous one. A good shortcut is Alt+D.
- Move last word
from first line to second line (within the same subtitle): Moves a
word from the top line to the bottom line inside the current subtitle. You
can set a shortcut like Ctrl+W for this.
- Move first word
from second line to first line: The opposite internal move. To keep things simple, I like Ctrl+D for this.
After assigning any
new shortcut, click Update to save it.
Important: When you move a word
to the next subtitle using one of these shortcuts, Subtitle Edit also
automatically adjusts the timing of both subtitles to reflect the change. You
don't need to fix the timestamps manually.
The Cleanup Pass
Go to the very top of
the subtitle list. Use your arrow keys or mouse to move down one subtitle at a time,
looking at the last word of each. When you
spot a dangling weak word:
- Press Alt+W
once to move the last word to the next subtitle.
- If you need to
move two words, press it twice.
- If you'd rather
pull words from the next subtitle up instead, move to the next subtitle
and press Alt+D as many times as needed.
If a subtitle turns orange,
it means it's exceeding the maximum line length. Keep moving words around until
the warning clears. If the total character count exceeds the maximum for both lines, you will need to split the subtitle.
This pass can be done
either as a dedicated sweep through all subtitles, or on a subtitle-by-subtitle
basis as you review timing, whichever feels more natural to you.
Step 8: Split Long Lines
After your dangling
word pass, go to Tools > Split Long Lines. This identifies any
subtitles that are still too long to display comfortably and proposes splits
for them. Review the suggestions and click OK to apply.
After splitting, run
the unbreak + auto break combination again on all subtitles (Ctrl+A →
Unbreak → Auto Break) to make sure the new line breaks are in the right
positions based on your rules.
Step 9: Review Timing with the Waveform
At this point, the
segmentation is in decent shape. Now it's time to check the timing of
individual subtitles against the actual audio.
Set your playback to a speed that's comfortable to move through the video faster during this pass. You can
play/pause with the spacebar or by clicking the play button.
Watch the subtitle
list as you play, and stop when you see a timing issue. The waveform at the
bottom shows you exactly where each subtitle starts and ends. If you can see
that a subtitle's boundary doesn't align with the speech, drag the start or end
marker directly on the waveform to fix it.
To zoom out on the
waveform for a broader view, use Ctrl + scroll wheel down.
To resume reviewing
from a specific subtitle after making a fix, double-click that subtitle
in the list to jump the playhead back to it.
Step 10: Manual Splitting and Merging
As you review, you'll
occasionally find subtitles that need to be restructured rather than just
adjusted. Here's how to handle each case.
Splitting a
Subtitle
- Click into the
subtitle text and place your cursor exactly where you want the split.
- Press Alt+S
to split. The subtitle is divided at the cursor position, and the timing
is split proportionally.
- After splitting,
click Unbreak and then Auto Break on the individual subtitle
(no need to do all) to clean up the line break placement.
Merging Two Subtitles
If two adjacent
subtitles contain a phrase that would read better as one unit, such as, for example,
"welcome to this module / where we will have an introduction", you
can combine them and re-split at a better point:
- Select the first
of the two subtitles.
- Press Ctrl+Shift+M
to merge. The text of both subtitles is combined into one.
- Inside the merged
subtitle, use Enter to place a line break if needed.
- If the merged subtitle is too long and needs to be split, press Alt+S
to split at the cursor.
- Click Unbreak
and Auto Break to finalize the line breaks.
Step 11: Save the SRT File
Once you're satisfied
with the subtitle draft, save the SRT file, which is now ready to be used with your video.
The Right Balance
Good subtitles take
time. For some projects, the priority is a clean, readable draft that
accurately represents the audio, not a perfect broadcast file.
Whisper's large models are accurate enough that the bulk of the work happens automatically, and that means that your time is best spent on:
- Systematic
transcription errors (fix with Find & Replace)
- Dangling weak
words at subtitle endings (fix with shortcuts)
- Subtitles where
the timing is visibly off in the waveform
- Any splits or
merges where the segmentation genuinely affects comprehension
And now, it's time to go create some subtitles! If you give this a try, let me know how it went in the comments below.
