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How to add text to a video

A title is what makes a clip readable with the sound off, which is how most video is watched. In Emaki Studio a title is an ordinary item on the timeline - you write it, style it, and drag it to where it belongs. Writing titles by hand is free. Here is how.

  1. 1. Add your clips first Open Video Edit and lay the video down: add your clips, trim them and get the order right. Text is easier to time once the cut is settled.
  2. 2. Add a title Add a title and type the words. It uses the same text engine as the carousel editor - the same typefaces, the same optical centring, the same padded highlight - so text looks the same wherever you set it in the app.
  3. 3. Style it so it stays readable Set the size, colour and alignment, and turn on a highlight or a shadow if the footage behind it is busy. A shadow is cast from the letters themselves, not from a box, so it reads cleanly over moving video.
  4. 4. Place it and time it Drag the title along the timeline to set when it appears and pull its ends to set how long it holds. Give it an entrance and exit so it does not pop in and out.
  5. 5. Export Export an MP4 with the text baked in. No watermark, at any output size.

Open the Video Edit tool · Read the full guide

Is adding text to a video free?
Yes. Writing a title by hand is free, as are the styling, placement and timing. Pasting a whole script to be laid out as a run of captions at once is a Pro convenience, but it produces the same title clips you could write yourself.
Can I add subtitles or captions?
Yes, as titles. Captions mode takes a script - one line per caption - and lays it out as a run of styled title clips timed end to end, which you can then drag, trim and edit like any other title. That bulk step is Pro; writing the same captions one at a time is free.
Will the text be sharp?
Yes. Titles are rendered at the output resolution when the video is encoded, not scaled up from the preview, so they stay crisp at whatever size you export.
Is anything uploaded?
No. The footage and the finished video stay on your device - the whole editor runs in your browser, with no account.