Caption and translate your church's sermon videos

This is for recorded services, not live in-service captioning

Worth being upfront about: this captions a recorded video file after the fact — the sermon you've already filmed and are about to upload or archive. It does not project live captions on a screen behind the pastor during the service itself. If real-time captions or live translation during the service is what you need, that's a different category of tool (dedicated live-captioning services exist for exactly that). What this is built for is turning this week's recorded sermon — or ten years of past ones sitting in a folder — into properly captioned, and optionally translated, video content people can watch later.

Why caption a sermon that already has a transcript in the pastor's notes

A prepared manuscript rarely matches what was actually said — ad-libs, scripture read aloud, responses from the congregation, a joke that wasn't in the notes. Transcribing the actual recording captures what happened, not what was planned. Beyond accessibility for hard-of-hearing members, captioned sermons on YouTube tend to hold viewers longer (captioned content generally sees noticeably higher average watch time than uncaptioned video) and give search engines actual text to index — someone searching for a phrase from your pastor's sermon can find it.

How it works

AI Subtitle Studio transcribes the video file on your own computer — your streaming platform's recording export, or a file straight off the camera — using Whisper AI speech recognition running entirely offline. Add a Vocabulary hint with your pastor's name, church name, ministry terms and any recurring names or places specific to your congregation, so the AI recognizes them correctly instead of guessing a similar-sounding common word. Because everything runs on-device, this also matters for anything more sensitive than a public sermon — a counseling session recording or an internal staff video never has to leave your computer to get captioned.

Exporting for YouTube, Facebook and your church app

Once transcribed, open the result in the built-in editor to review and fix any lines — proper nouns and scripture references are worth a quick check — then export as SRT or VTT. Both are accepted directly by YouTube Studio (Subtitles → Upload file) and Facebook's video captions, and most church management or streaming platforms that support custom captions take one of the two as well.

Translating a sermon for a multilingual congregation

If your congregation includes members who'd follow along more easily in Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Portuguese or another language, translate the finished English (or any source-language) caption file with AI subtitle translation and upload it as a second caption track on the same video, or publish a separate translated copy for that language community to share. For sermon content, the Faithful translation style is usually the better choice over the more freely-rephrased default — it stays closer to the exact wording, which matters more for scripture references and doctrinal precision than for casual conversation. This produces an on-demand translated caption people watch after the fact; it's a different tool from a live in-service interpretation booth or real-time translation display.

Batch-captioning a backlog, or a weekly upload schedule

Whether it's twenty years of sermon recordings on old hard drives with no captions at all, or a weekly service that needs captioning every Monday morning, queue multiple video files on the Dashboard and run Transcribe across all of them in one batch — each processed unattended, ready to export when you check back.

How to caption a sermon recording

1. 1 Add the recording Drag the sermon video file into the Dashboard — an export from your streaming platform, or a file straight off the camera. MP4, MKV, MOV and most common formats are supported.
2. 2 Add a vocabulary hint List your pastor's name, church name and any recurring ministry terms so the AI transcribes them correctly instead of a similar-sounding word.
3. 3 Transcribe Run AI transcription — Whisper processes the audio locally and produces a fully timed subtitle, no upload required.
4. 4 Review in the editor Skim the result and fix anything that needs a tweak, especially names and scripture references.
5. 5 Export, and translate if needed Export as SRT or VTT for upload, or translate it first for a multilingual congregation, then export both.

Frequently asked questions

Does this caption the service live, in real time, during Sunday worship?

No — it transcribes a recorded video file after the service, for uploading or archiving afterward. Real-time captions projected live during the service are a different kind of tool.

Can it handle scripture references and theological vocabulary correctly?

Add them as a vocabulary hint — book names, doctrinal terms, your pastor's name — and the AI will recognize them far more reliably than guessing from audio alone. Still worth a quick pass in the editor afterward, since accuracy on unusual terms is never perfect.

Is this safe to use on a counseling session or internal staff recording, not just public sermons?

Yes — transcription runs entirely offline, so nothing about the video or its content is uploaded anywhere. That matters more for sensitive recordings than for a sermon that's about to be public anyway.

Can we translate our sermons for our Spanish- or Mandarin-speaking members?

Yes — translate the finished caption file with AI subtitle translation and upload it as an additional caption track, or share it as a separate file. It works on the recording after the fact, not as live interpretation during the service.

Does this cost per sermon or per minute?

No — it's a one-time app purchase with no per-minute or per-video captioning fees, unlike most cloud captioning and live-captioning services built for churches.

Can we caption years of old sermon recordings at once?

Yes — batch processing runs transcription across a whole folder of files unattended, which works as well for an archive of old recordings as it does for a weekly upload.

Related guides

• Generate YouTube captions and subtitles with AI
• Generate subtitles from any video with AI
• AI subtitle translation with DeepSeek
• How to batch-extract subtitles from an entire TV season
• How to translate SRT subtitles into another language