The short answer
Burn captions in when the video is headed for a social feed like Reels, TikTok or Shorts, where the captions are part of the look and you can't count on viewers turning them on. Use closed captions, a separate SRT or VTT file, for YouTube, course platforms, client deliverables and anything that needs more than one language.
What burned-in captions are
Burned-in captions, also called open captions, are rendered into the video frames themselves. Once you export, they're pixels like everything else in the shot.
- They look the same on every platform and every device.
- You control the font, size, color and position, so they can match your brand.
- Viewers can't turn them off, and fixing a typo means exporting again.
What closed captions are
Closed captions live in a separate text file that travels alongside the video. The player draws them on top of the picture, and the viewer decides whether they're on.
- Viewers can switch them on or off, and many players let them change the size and color.
- You can fix a mistake by uploading a corrected file, without touching the video.
- You can offer several languages for the same video.
- The platform gets your words as text, not just as pixels in the frame.
Side by side
| Burned-in | Closed | |
|---|---|---|
| Viewer can turn off | No | Yes |
| Styling | Fully yours | Set by the player |
| Fixing a typo | Export again | Upload a new file |
| Languages | One per export | One file per language |
| Best for | Reels, TikTok, Shorts, ads | YouTube, courses, client hand-offs |
When to use both
Plenty of creators cut one video two ways: a vertical clip with bold burned-in captions for social, and a long-form version on YouTube with an SRT file attached.
Just don't do both on the same upload. If a video already has burned-in captions and you also attach a caption file, anyone who switches captions on sees the same words twice.
Doing either in HeyCaption
Both come out of the same transcript, so you only review your captions once.
- Burned-in: pick Karaoke, Bold or Subtitle, then export an MP4 or MOV.
- Closed: export an SRT or VTT file and upload it with your video.
Not sure which file type? Read SRT vs VTT.