Friskription → Subtitle your own video

How to add translated subtitles to your own video

Drop a file into the browser, pick a language, and download the subtitles as SRT or VTT. Nothing to install, the video never leaves your computer, and the first thirty minutes each week are free.

What you need

• A browser. No extension, no download, nothing to sign up for yet.
• A file in MP4, WebM, MP3, M4A or WAV.
• A Google account, at the point where subtitles are actually generated — they are made on a server and billed by the minute, so they need somewhere to bill. Signing in creates the account if you do not have one, and it opens with 30 free minutes a week.

The four steps

1. Choose your file

   Open the media studio and drop the video or audio in. It is read in the browser: the file itself stays on your computer, and only short pieces of the audio are sent out to be transcribed. Nothing is stored afterwards.

   

2. Say what you want, and into which language

   Three things are on offer once the studio has read your file:

   • Generate a subtitle file — the one this guide is about. Produces cues you can download as SRT or VTT.
   • Watch with live subtitles — plays the file now, with lines landing as the speech does. Nothing to download.
   • I already have subtitles — load your own SRT or VTT and just watch. This one is free and needs no account at all.

   Set Translate into to the language you want. There are fifteen, and the spoken language is detected for you, so there is normally nothing else to set.

   

3. Pick the whole file, or one part of it

   Leave Everything ticked to subtitle the lot. To do one section instead, untick it, scrub the preview to a moment and pin it as the start, then do the same for the end. Only the range you choose is transcribed — useful when you want captions for a two-minute clip out of an hour-long recording.

   Only speech is billed either way, so long silences, music beds and room tone in the file do not eat into your minutes.

4. Read it through, then download

   The last step lists every line with its timing. Read it before you export — names and technical terms are where any transcript is weakest, and the glossary in Settings fixes a name for good if you are going to subtitle more from the same source.

   If a cue lands consistently early or late against the picture, Adjust timings shifts them without regenerating anything. Then take Download SRT or Download VTT.

What you actually get

Both formats carry the same lines and the same timings. This is a real export, three cues long:

1
00:00:01,200 --> 00:00:04,600
So today we are finally opening the
box everyone has been asking about.

2
00:00:04,600 --> 00:00:07,900
I have not looked inside. Not once,
I promise.

3
00:00:08,300 --> 00:00:11,400
Right — let us do this properly.

WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.200 --> 00:00:04.600
So today we are finally opening the
box everyone has been asking about.

2
00:00:04.600 --> 00:00:07.900
I have not looked inside. Not once,
I promise.

3
00:00:08.300 --> 00:00:11.400
Right — let us do this properly.

The differences are small and entirely mechanical: VTT opens with a WEBVTT line, and its timestamps separate the milliseconds with a full stop where SRT uses a comma. Nothing else changes.

SRT or VTT — which one to take

Keeping the original language too

For language learning, or for an audience that wants to check the translation, each cue can carry both. Turn on Also show the original words under the translation in Settings before you generate, and the export looks like this:

1
00:00:01,200 --> 00:00:04,600
So today we are finally opening the box everyone has been asking about.
(というわけで今日は、みんなが気になってた例の箱をついに開けます。)

2
00:00:04,600 --> 00:00:07,900
I have not looked inside. Not once, I promise.
(中身はまだ見てません。一度も、本当に。)

The translated line comes first and the original sits beneath it in brackets, in the same cue — so any player shows them together without needing two subtitle tracks.

What it costs

Thirty minutes every week, free, refilled every Monday whether or not you have ever paid. There is no subscription of any kind.

• Past the weekly allowance, a one-time $1.99 starter pack adds 90 minutes.
• Regular packs run $2.99 to $24.99, up to 1,440 minutes. Bigger packs cost less per minute, and minutes never expire.
• You can instead connect your own OpenAI, Anthropic or ElevenLabs API keys and pay only your provider.

Minutes are counted against speech, not file length, so a recording with long gaps costs less than its runtime suggests. Full prices are on the minute store.

The fifteen languages

English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Italian, Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian. The language being spoken is detected automatically — you only choose what to translate into.

Questions