Subtitles that honor your story
Your documentary took months, sometimes years. Its subtitles deserve the same care, so our AI Reviewer reads every line before your audience does.
Why documentary subtitles are uniquely hard
Documentary filmmaking presents subtitling challenges that generic tools aren't built to handle.
Nuanced dialogue
Documentaries feature real people speaking naturally, with accents, dialects and overlapping speech that generic engines flatten.
Cultural context
Interviews reference local customs, historical events, and cultural expressions that require careful translation to preserve meaning.
Multi-speaker scenes
Panel discussions, crowd scenes, and overlapping dialogue need precise speaker identification and timing.
Festival deadlines
Submission windows are tight. You need fast turnaround without sacrificing the quality that judges and audiences expect.
Built for the demands of documentary work
Every feature is designed around the real needs of documentary filmmakers and post-production teams.
AI transcription your team refines
AI handles the initial transcription across 90+ languages. Your editors then work the track in our studio, several at once, with changes syncing live.
Culturally Sensitive Translation
Translations that go beyond word-for-word. Our editors ensure cultural references, idioms, and colloquialisms are adapted for the target audience.
Language-Specific QA
Automated checks on reading speed, line breaks, typographic conventions and timing. Reading speed is yours to set per project; typographic rules follow the language.
Precise Timing & Sync
Frame-accurate subtitle timing that respects your editorial rhythm. Subtitles appear and disappear in sync with dialogue and scene cuts.
Industry-Standard Formats
Export in SRT, VTT and ASS as sidecar files, or subtitles burned into the video with the font embedded so it renders identically on any machine.
Burned-In Subtitle Export
Generate videos with permanently embedded subtitles for festival screeners and social cuts, with the font travelling inside the file.
From raw footage to festival-ready subtitles
Upload your documentary
Drag and drop your video file. We support all major formats up to feature-length.
AI transcribes & translates
Our AI generates an accurate base transcription and translates into your target languages.
Your editors refine
Your team reviews the track in the studio, with the AI Reviewer surfacing what needs attention first and separating errors from style.
Export & deliver
Download in the format you need, ready for festivals, screening copies or streaming delivery.
Built for this kind of material
Interview-heavy documentaries with multiple speakers and languages
Nature and wildlife films requiring precise narration timing
Historical documentaries with archival footage and voiceover
Investigative journalism with sensitive, context-dependent dialogue
Festival submissions requiring multiple language tracks
Streaming platform delivery with strict format requirements
What an agency checks before handing over a project
Your linguists stay yours. Hello8 is the studio they work in, not a vendor that replaces them.
Line breaks that follow the grammar
Our segmenter carries a French and English model of where a subtitle may end. It breaks before connectors and relative pronouns, and refuses to end a cue on an article, a preposition or an elided form. Reading speed is enforced during cue generation, before the first write, so your linguists work inside the constraint instead of against a later pass that undoes their phrasing. Other languages use universal rules, and we say which is which on each language page.
An AI review that separates errors from style
The reviewer classifies guillemet formatting, optional commas and French typographic spacing as stylistic, and keeps grammar, agreement and mistranslation as errors. Your reviewer sees what matters first rather than a flat wall of warnings, and can accept or dismiss a whole class of suggestions in one gesture.
Delivery your client will accept
SRT, VTT and ASS as sidecar files, or subtitles burned into the video for screening copies, with the font embedded so it renders the same on any machine. SDH with speaker identification and non-speech information, which is what the EAA and RGAA frameworks require of a subtitle track.
One track, every language
Speaker turns keep their own source language, and diarization separates them during transcription. A trilingual interview becomes one timed track, not three files to reconcile. Every target language shares that transcript and that timing pass, so a mis-heard proper noun is corrected once, at the source, for all of them.
On real archive material
Our reference work is on testimony and archive footage for a European memorial institution: degraded source audio, multiple languages inside single interviews, and a delivery standard set by an institution rather than a platform.
Frequently asked questions
- Can you transcribe archive footage with poor audio?
- Yes. Archive footage goes through the same speech-to-text engines and the same AI Reviewer pass. The original transcript stays editable, so a misheard name gets fixed once, at the source, for every language.
- What about films with interviews in several languages?
- Each speaker turn keeps its own source language. Diarization separates the speakers during transcription, so a trilingual interview becomes one timed track rather than three files to reconcile.
- Which delivery formats do you produce?
- SRT, VTT and ASS as sidecar files, or subtitles burned into the video for festival and screening copies.
- Do your subtitles meet EAA and RGAA accessibility requirements?
- We produce SDH captions with speaker identification and non-speech information, which is what those frameworks require of subtitle tracks. Compliance of the whole delivery is your distributor's call; the track will not be the reason it fails.
- How much of the work is automated?
- Transcription, translation and a full AI Reviewer pass. The editorial calls stay with you: you accept or dismiss each suggestion in context.
Further reading
Proofread Premiere Pro's Auto-Generated Captions
Captions generated by Premiere Pro are a first draft. See the mistakes they leave behind, and how to fix them without touching your timings.
Read articleSDH Subtitles: What They Are, When You Need Them, and How to Create Them
SDH goes beyond regular subtitles with sound effects, speaker identification, and music cues. Learn when SDH is legally required and how to create it.
Read articleWhat is CPS in Subtitles? A Complete Guide to Characters Per Second
CPS determines whether viewers can actually read your subtitles. Learn the standards Netflix, BBC, and broadcasters enforce, and how to check your files before delivery.
Read article
Your documentary deserves subtitles as good as the film itself
Book a free call to discuss your project. We'll help you find the right approach for your documentary.