Three paths from audio to captions. Each one works. Each one costs you differently. In time, money, or quality. What you actually get depends on which you pick. A caption track is a separate file attached to the video, not hardcoded over the image. The viewer toggles it with the **CC** button; YouTube's algorithm reads it as a discoverability signal. Each video can have multiple caption tracks, one per language. ## Path 1. Manual typing in YouTube Studio YouTube Studio → Subtitles → Add language → Type manually. Opens a timeline editor. You listen to the audio, type what you hear, set the start and end time of each segment. **Time:** 4 to 6 times the video's length per language. A 60-minute episode means 4 to 6 hours of work if you're doing it solo. Two languages (HR + EN) adds up to 8 to 12 hours. **Cost if you outsource:** a professional captioner in Croatia charges roughly 8 to 15 €/min of input audio, depending on turnaround and content complexity. 60-min × 12 € ≈ 720 € per language. HR + EN therefore jumps to ~1440 €. **Quality:** the highest possible. The human ear catches accent, irony, proper nouns. **When it's worth it:** premium productions, branded content where you cannot afford mistakes, short but important videos (e.g. an official ad). ## Path 2. YouTube auto-captions Upload a video → YouTube automatically generates a caption track in the audio's language. You can enable **auto-translate** for a second language (English from Croatian, etc.). **Time:** 0 hours of direct work. YouTube processes it within 30 minutes of upload. **Cost:** 0 €. **Quality** (impression, not WER measured): * Croatian auto-captions handle clean narration with a single speaker decently. Proper nouns drop, code-switching breaks them, numbers are a lottery. * English auto-translate from Croatian is grammatically passable, but names aren't translated consistently, idioms get lost, technical terminology often drifts off-topic. **When it's worth it:** personal vlogs, experimental content, channels where viewers don't usually toggle captions on. Something is better than nothing. But not *for* an international audience. ## Path 3. Automated pipeline (Titlomat) You connect your channel via OAuth, and we generate Croatian and English caption tracks for every new upload and push them back to the video. **Time:** 30 seconds to connect, 0 for every subsequent video. You can review before publishing if you want. **Cost:** from 19 €/mo for 5 hours of video material. Pricing. **Quality:** Phase-0 baseline across 3 channels yields a WER of 1.85% to 12.48% depending on content (see: Why Whisper makes mistakes on Croatian). A per-channel custom dictionary cuts errors by 3+ percentage points further. **When it's worth it:** regular channels (≥2 episodes/mo), podcasts and interview formats, channels that want to grow beyond the Croatian-speaking audience. ## Comparison table | Path | Time per 60-min episode | Cost | WER | Scales | |------|-------------------------|------|----------|--------| | Manual (you) | 8 to 12h for HR + EN | 0 € | ~0% | No | | Manual (outsourced) | 1 to 2 days lead time | ~1440 € (HR+EN) | ~0% | Expensively | | YT auto-captions | 30 min wait | 0 € | variable | Yes | | Titlomat | ~5 min processing | from 19 €/mo | 1.85% to 12.48% | Yes | ## How the YouTube algorithm sees this YouTube recommends captions as a **discoverability signal**. Videos with captions rank better in countries whose language is only covered by the caption track. Concretely: a Croatian podcast with an English caption track becomes a *recommendation candidate* for viewers in Germany, the UK, and the US. Our internal methodology for measuring how many more viewers this actually brings: here. ## What to pick * One important video a year? Manual, outsourced. Premium quality justifies premium pricing. * A channel that isn't primarily about growth? YT auto-captions. There's no better free option. * A regular channel with international-audience ambitions? Automated pipeline. Titlomat covers the third category. Connect a channel, the next episode automatically gets Croatian and English captions, WER and reach lift are visible in the dashboard. Try it free. The first week is on us.

#guide

How to add Croatian and English captions to YouTube