What’s the least painful way to add captions to short videos?

Try the automatic caption feature in the editor you already use, if it has one. Keeping transcription and styling in the same app can make the process quicker, though accuracy varies, so check a short sample before committing to a workflow.

For clips under a couple of minutes, I’d focus on the audio first. Clear speech and little background noise tend to make automatic transcription easier to review. You’ll still want to check names, unusual terms, and punctuation, but good timing can save much of the tedious work.

Captions saved from a phone’s live-caption feature might help, but check what export options it actually offers on your device. A feature meant for viewing speech isn’t necessarily a smooth way to produce a caption file for editing, and you may still need to correct timing or text.