💬 Captionly
Burn karaoke captions onto your clips, all on your own hardware.
Submagic charges $18–39 a month to run Whisper and ffmpeg on your clips. Captionly is $34 once. Drop a video, run Whisper locally for word-level timestamps, pick a caption style, fix any misheard words inline, and burn a ready-to-post MP4 — 100% on your machine. Same pipeline, your hardware, zero subscription.
Captionly screenshot is being captured — the app is shipped and real.
Features
Local Whisper transcription
whisper.cpp with word-level timestamps; the engine and model download once on first run, then run fully offline.
Karaoke word-highlight captions
Real ASS timing tags per word for the TikTok and Reels look, rendered by ffmpeg exactly as previewed.
3 style presets
Karaoke Highlight, Bold Center and Classic Subtitle, plus font size, position and highlight color controls.
Inline editing with re-sync
Click a caption, fix the words, and timings redistribute proportionally across the cue with no re-transcribing.
Keyword to emoji decoration
Optional mapping turns words like money into an emoji, with 50+ built-in mappings.
Burn-in export
ffmpeg ass filter to H.264 MP4 with audio stream-copied and live progress.
SRT and ASS export
Export subtitle files for YouTube uploads or further editing.
100% local
Your footage never leaves your machine — no accounts, no telemetry.
Captionly vs Submagic
Submagic at $18–39/mo runs roughly $216/year — $432 over two years. Captionly is $34, once.
| Captionly | Submagic | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $34 once | $18–39/mo |
| Yearly cost | $0 after purchase | $216–468 |
| Word-level auto captions | Yes | Yes |
| Karaoke word-highlight styles | Yes | Yes |
| Edit transcript + re-sync | Yes | Yes |
| AI b-roll / zooms / sound effects | No | Yes |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
| Upload limits | None | Plan-based |
Costs about one month of Submagic, then captions the rest of your clips for free.
Three steps, no subscription
Buy once on Whop
One payment of $34 gets you the signed Windows installer, or clone the MIT source and build it yourself for free.
Transcribe locally
Drop a video and run whisper.cpp on your machine for word-level timestamps, then fix any misheard words inline.
Burn and post
Pick a style, burn a ready-to-post MP4 with ffmpeg, or export SRT and ASS for elsewhere.
Honest answers
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — Captionly is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/video-clip-captioner. The $34 buys the signed Windows installer; building from source is free.
Does my footage get uploaded?
Never. Captionly runs Whisper and ffmpeg entirely on your machine — your footage never leaves it, with no accounts or telemetry.
Does it do everything Submagic does?
No. Submagic's AI b-roll, auto-zoom and template marketplace are real value if you use them. If what you use is transcribe, pretty word captions and export, Captionly does that pipeline locally for one month's price.
Own Captionly forever
$34 once. Signed installer, 1-click setup, updates included. No renewal, no account with us, no meter. Or build it yourself from the MIT source — it's the same app.