Add French subtitles to YouTube videos
Auto-generate French (Français) captions and burn them into your YouTube video. 100% browser-based, no upload, no watermark, free forever.
16:9 horizontal · unlimited · powered by Whisper-Turbo
Why this works for YouTube
Long-form YouTube captions should prioritize readability over flair. Cinema-letterbox or interview-clean styles work best for tutorials, vlogs, and podcast clips.
Why Whisper handles French well
BurnSub uses OpenAI's Whisper-Turbo (Whisper code: fr),
which has been trained on hundreds of thousands of hours of French speech.
Accuracy on clear-audio French content is typically 92–97%.
Recommended styles for YouTube
Cinema Letterbox
Interview Clean Bottom
Podcast Clean Bottom
Education Explainer Blue
Step-by-step: French subtitles for YouTube
- Open BurnSub. No signup needed — just drop your YouTube-format video.
- Pick French from the language dropdown so Whisper-Turbo transcribes accurately.
- Wait 30–60 seconds. The model runs locally on your GPU (or CPU as fallback).
- Edit captions if needed — every line is editable before burning.
- Pick a style from the recommended YouTube presets above.
- Burn + Download. WebCodecs encodes your video on your hardware. No upload at any step.
Frequently asked
Is auto-caption accurate for French?
Whisper-Turbo's accuracy on French audio is typically 92–97% for clear speech. Background noise, heavy accents, and slang reduce accuracy. Every caption line is editable before burning, so you can fix anything Whisper missed.
Does the YouTube algorithm reward burned captions?
Burned captions are read directly by viewers (the words appear on screen) — no AI-detection step required. YouTube typically rewards videos with on-screen text because watch-time goes up. Burned subs typically out-perform soft subs on sound-off feeds.
Can I use French subs on a video that's spoken in another language?
Yes — generate the original-language transcript first, then use a translation tool to render it in French, paste the translated SRT back in BurnSub, and burn. Native translation is on the roadmap.