The best subtitle workflow for creators using DaVinci Resolve

17 August 2026 · 5 min read

Resolve doesn't include automatic transcription on either edition, which means the built-in subtitle track is a typing exercise unless you feed it a file that's already timed. This is the workflow that skips the typing.

Why typing captions in Resolve doesn't scale

The built-in subtitle track is genuinely fine for a handful of cues — a title card, a few key phrases. For a full talking video, typing every line while scrubbing is a few hours of work per ten minutes of footage, and it's the same few hours every single time, since there's no memory of previous transcripts to draw on.

The workflow

1. Extract audio from your source file (video is decoded in the browser, so a large file never has to fully upload).
2. Transcribe with forced alignment — every word gets its own timestamp, not just each line.
3. Set line breaks: word count or natural sentence boundaries, whichever reads better for the content.
4. Export SRT, encoded as UTF-8 so special characters survive the import.
5. In Resolve: File → Import → Subtitle. Match the SRT's zero point to your timeline start, then style the resulting track.

The timeline-offset gotcha

If your timeline starts at something other than 00:00:00:00 — 01:00:00:00 is common in broadcast-style projects — the SRT's own zero point needs to match, or every cue lands off by exactly that offset. This is the single most common reason an otherwise-correct SRT looks wrong immediately after import.