Voice and subtitles

This lesson is still being tested: it improves with learners' feedback. If something is unclear, it is the lesson that needs fixing, not you.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to

choose the voice-over: your own, or a synthetic voice, with its rules;
record a clean voice-over;
have subtitles prepared in SRT format, and check them;
know what automatic subtitles are worth.

Why it matters to you

A good share of videos are watched without sound: without subtitles, your message gets lost. And the voice carries the tone of your video. AI tools offer synthetic voices, and even voice cloning: it is powerful, and it is exactly where the abuses are. This lesson gives you a simple, honest method, and subtitles without mistakes.

Before you start


You need	Your phone or your computer to record your voice, your assistant or Claude Code, and your script and your storyboard (lesson 1)
Cost	€0 with your own voice; synthetic voices often have paid plans, to be checked
Duration	60 minutes
Reminder	Never another person’s voice without their permission, nor to imitate them

Understand it in 3 minutes

Three voice choices:

Voice	Good for	What to know
Your own	The simplest, and the most personal	A quiet place, the phone close to your mouth, several takes
A synthetic voice	When you don’t want to or can’t record	Read the tool’s terms and its prices, as of the date. Check above all whether the free plan allows commercial use and voice cloning: according to ElevenLabs’ pricing page (24/10/2026, in dollars), the commercial license and instant cloning come with the paid Starter plan
A cloned voice	Your own voice, reproduced by an AI	Only yours, or that of a person who has given their permission

The rules of tools and platforms (24/10/2026):

ElevenLabs, a synthetic voice tool, devotes part of its usage rules to deception, manipulation and impersonation, and offers a report option to anyone who thinks their voice was used without their consent;
YouTube lists cloning your own voice for a voice-over among the examples that do not need to be flagged; but you must flag content that makes a real person say or do something they did not say or do.

Subtitles in SRT format, the most widespread: a text file, with for each subtitle a number, a start and end time, then one or two lines of text.

1
00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,500
The Bookmarks club's welcome-back evening
is on [date to be confirmed], at 18:30.

Automatic subtitles. According to YouTube, it automatically creates subtitles using speech recognition; their quality can vary, and YouTube encourages adding subtitles supplied by professionals first. When you already have the script, the safest way is to start from it.

Do it together

1Step 1: Record the voice-over

Read your script (lesson 1) aloud, in a quiet place, with your phone close to your mouth. Do three takes. Keep the best one, and note its real length: fix the storyboard if it differs.

2Step 2: Subtitles from the script

In Claude Code (or your assistant, by pasting the script and the storyboard):

Read the script and the storyboard. Write the voice-over subtitles in SRT format, timed to the storyboard's times. At most 2 lines per subtitle, and at most 40 characters per line. Write them to sous-titres.srt, and do not create any other file.

If your assistant does not create the file itself, copy the text into a plain text editor and save it as sous-titres.srt, like the CSV file in module 3, lesson 3.

In our test of 24/10/2026, Claude Code wrote 7 subtitles. We checked the file: ffmpeg (a video processing program) reads it without error, and the numbers, times and line lengths follow the instructions.

The session also flagged a risk on its own: the two sentences of shot 6 (about 16 words) took a little more than the 6 seconds of their shot.

3Step 3: Match the real voice

The storyboard’s times are only an estimate: when editing (lesson 4), you will time each subtitle to your real voice. Here is what each program allows. Importing an SRT file is not available everywhere:

DaVinci Resolve: its official guide (version 15, 2018) describes importing an SRT file (right-click in the Media Pool, then Import Subtitle); the names may differ in your version;
Clipchamp: its help describes automatically creating subtitles from your voice and downloading an SRT file, not importing one. Let the tool generate the subtitles (check what your plan allows), then correct them following your SRT file;
iMovie: Apple’s help mentions only videos, photos and audio for importing. Add text titles instead, using the sentences from your SRT file.

4Step 4: Proofread

Proofread each subtitle, at the video’s speed: spelling, names, dates, numbers. Can a subtitle be read in full before it disappears?

Your turn

Record your video’s voice-over, and note its real length.
Have the SRT subtitles prepared from the script.
Time them to your voice in your editing software, then proofread them.
Note in your folder: the source of the voice (your voice, or the synthetic tool and its terms).

Check your work

It worked if:

the voice-over is yours, or a voice you have the right to use;
your subtitles follow your SRT file (imported, or retyped if your software doesn’t import it), and each subtitle lands on its sentence;
each subtitle is proofread: spelling, names, dates, numbers;
no subtitle disappears before it could be read.

Common mistakes:

cloning someone’s voice “just to try”;
keeping automatic subtitles without proofreading them;
subtitles that are too long, covering half the picture;
subtitles timed to the storyboard, never to the real voice.

Keep it and pick it up later

Keep the SRT file with the video: it can be reused if you redo the editing.
Keep the best voice take, and the exact script it reads.

Going further

optional

An SRT file is easy to translate: ask for the translation keeping the numbers and times exactly, then have it proofread by someone who speaks the language.

New words

4 words explained

Word	What it means
Synthetic voice	A voice produced by an AI from a text
Cloned voice	A synthetic voice that imitates a person’s voice
SRT	The most common subtitle file format: number, times, text
Automatic subtitles	Subtitles created by speech recognition, to be proofread

The test in step 2 was actually run with Claude Code 2.1.310, and the file checked with ffmpeg and a check script (test report, T62). In the example above, the day and date are left to be confirmed: the club’s notes (module 9) say “Saturday, November 22”, which is a Sunday in 2026, and the club must be asked. To be checked: no synthetic voice was tried for this lesson; importing the SRT file was not played out in editing software.

Date, version, sources Written on 24/10/2026. Checks of 24/10/2026:

automatic subtitles by speech recognition, variable quality: support.google.com/youtube, automatic captions;
cloning your own voice among the examples not to flag, content making a real person say or do what they did not say or do: support.google.com/youtube, altered or synthetic content;
importing an SRT file: DaVinci Resolve 15 official guide (blackmagicdesign.com), Microsoft help “How to use autocaptions in Clipchamp”, Apple help “Import media into iMovie from your Mac”;
ElevenLabs rules (deception, manipulation and impersonation; reporting a voice used without consent): elevenlabs.io/use-policy;
commercial license and instant cloning depending on the plan: elevenlabs.io/pricing.