2026-07-23 · AutoCast
Once you’re dubbing into multiple languages, the SRT file becomes as much a part of your deliverable as the video itself — and it’s the part most creators get sloppy with, because it’s easy to end up with five files named export.srt, export (1).srt, export final.srt and no way to tell which language is which once they’re out of your project folder.
Use the video’s base name plus an ISO language code, not a description: productdemo.en.srt, productdemo.es.srt, productdemo.ja.srt — not productdemo-spanish-final.srt. Two reasons this matters: YouTube and most LMS platforms auto-detect language from exactly this pattern when you bulk-upload caption tracks, and the ISO code survives translation of your own filenames later (a file named “spanish” is wrong the moment you’re not the one reading it).
Keep subtitles as a separate file whenever the platform supports uploading them independently — YouTube, Udemy, Teachable, and Vimeo all do. Separate files let viewers toggle captions off, let the platform auto-translate on top of your existing track, and don’t cost you a re-export if you fix one line later.
Burn subtitles into the video itself only when you’re distributing somewhere that won’t carry a caption track at all — a raw MP4 shared over email, an Instagram or TikTok upload, or an autoplaying embed on your own site where you can’t guarantee the player renders external SRT files. Burned-in captions are also the safer choice for silent-autoplay contexts generally, since a viewer scrolling with sound off is relying entirely on the caption to know what’s being said.
For your own website, the better answer is usually neither: use an HTML5 <video> element with a <track> tag pointing at the SRT (converted to WebVTT, which is the same cues in a different wrapper), so captions stay native, toggleable, and don’t need re-encoding if you edit the transcript.
YouTube accepts SRT directly and handles the language-code naming pattern well for bulk caption uploads. Udemy requires captions to be uploaded per-lecture through their own interface rather than bulk-matched by filename, so budget time for that if you’re launching a course in several languages at once. Your own site is the most flexible but the most manual — nothing auto-detects anything, so your naming discipline is the only thing keeping five languages of captions straight.
Export your MP4 and matching SRT together straight from AutoCast — see Export MP4 and SRT for the export flow, and recommended export settings by platform for resolution and format specifics per destination.