How to Add Karaoke Captions to Your Videos
Word-by-word captions are one of the strongest retention tools in short-form. Here's how to do them right.
Most short-form video is watched with the sound off, so captions aren't optional — they're the primary channel. Karaoke captions, where each word highlights as it's spoken, add a rhythm that keeps eyes on the screen.
This guide explains what makes karaoke captions work and how to add them so they don't drift out of sync the way auto-generated subtitles often do.
Step by step
- 1Get accurate word-level timingKaraoke captions need per-word timestamps, not just line-level timing. The more precise the source, the tighter the captions.
- 2Style for mobileUse large, high-contrast text and keep lines short so captions are legible on a phone in a busy feed.
- 3Burn them inRendering captions into the video file (rather than a separate track) guarantees they display everywhere, including where uploaded subtitle files are ignored.
- 4Let the pipeline handle itMenivor generates karaoke captions automatically and burns them in with libass, timed to ElevenLabs word-level timestamps — the same source that drives the voiceover and avatar.
Why sync usually breaks — and how to avoid it
Drift happens when captions are timed from a different source than the audio. Menivor treats ElevenLabs word-level timestamps as the single timing authority for the whole render, so the voice, the avatar's mouth, and the on-screen words all reference the same clock.
Correct glyph rendering matters just as much as timing. Menivor bundles fonts with extended Latin coverage, so characters like ş, ğ, ı, İ, ç, and ö render correctly.
Frequently asked questions
- Are karaoke captions better than normal subtitles?
- For retention, usually yes. Word-by-word highlighting adds a rhythm that holds attention, and burned-in captions display everywhere without a separate file.
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