Free tool
French subtitle generator
This French subtitle generator writes sous-titres for a video spoken in French: accents, cedillas and elisions such as qu’à or l’armée in place, two lines at most, each subtitle timed to the voice, ready as an SRT or VTT file.
- Free
- Set to French
- Nothing is stored
Drop your French video here, or Choose your French video
MP4, MOV, MKV or WebM video, or MP3, M4A or WAV audio. Up to 30 minutes of each file, 3 free files a day. Spoken language: French.
Sous-titres for French videos every week? NoteOwl transcribes French recordings on your Mac with unlimited transcription and saves SRT subtitles that name each speaker.
How it works
How do you make French subtitles for a video?
Drop the video on the page. Its sound is transcribed in French, a few seconds at a time, and set out as numbered sous-titres that appear as each phrase is spoken. Look through the preview, then download SRT or VTT.
- 1
Choose the video
A cours magistral, a YouTube vlog, a podcast filmed in a studio or a webinar; the audio alone works too.
- 2
Check the sous-titres
Each one is listed with its number, timing and lines. The first 30 minutes of a long video are subtitled.
- 3
Download
SRT for YouTube, Vimeo or Final Cut Pro; VTT for a player on your own site.
Why set the subtitles to French?
Because a language that is guessed can slip on a short, noisy passage, and one subtitle in the wrong language breaks the flow for viewers. With the page set to French, every sous-titre is written in French, whoever is speaking.
Bilingual videos are the exception: where a speaker moves between French and English for whole passages, the main subtitle generator is the better fit, as it decides the language of each passage itself.
Does a French question mark stay with its word?
Yes. French puts a space before ? and !, and a mark that stands after a space is still attached to the word before it, so a line never begins with a question mark, an exclamation mark or a colon.
Our 40 test clips held no question marks at all, only full stops, commas and 59 apostrophes, so check any question in your own video: Netflix’s French style guide wants a space before ? and !, a space on both sides of a colon, and no semicolons.
How do elisions and numbers look in French subtitles?
Elided words stay joined to their apostrophe, so “qu’à”, “d’accréditation” and “L’enregistrement” are never split. Large numbers come with a space between the thousands, as in “800 000 soldats”, while percentages arrived as “100%” and “30%”, without the space.
Two quick fixes for a French house style: add a non-breaking space before % (“100 %”), and make sure a long number such as 800 000 sits on one line. The space inside it is an ordinary one, so a line can break there; in our test it didn’t.
- An elision
- The subtitle’s linesL'enregistrement du tigre ne ressemble / pas à un enregistrement en plus du lion,
- Thousands
- The subtitle’s linesquand plus de 800 000 soldats de l'armée / rouge de l'Union soviétique sont arrivés
- A percentage
- The subtitle’s linesdes conducteurs ne peuvent être / prédits avec 100% de certitude.
| What it shows | The subtitle’s lines |
|---|---|
| An elision | L'enregistrement du tigre ne ressemble / pas à un enregistrement en plus du lion, |
| Thousands | quand plus de 800 000 soldats de l'armée / rouge de l'Union soviétique sont arrivés |
| A percentage | des conducteurs ne peuvent être / prédits avec 100% de certitude. |
Who reads French subtitles?
More people than dubbing suggests. France dubs most films, yet original-language screenings with French subtitles, the VOST, took 16.9% of cinema tickets by the national film centre’s count, and digital TV lets viewers switch to the original track with French subtitles.
Online, French subtitles also serve people watching with the sound off. On YouTube, upload the SRT as French; on your own site, give the player the VTT.
French subtitles with speaker names, on your Mac?
NoteOwl understands French on your Mac, from France and from Canada. It transcribes French recordings there with unlimited transcription, distinguishes the speakers and saves SRT subtitles with their names. If you need a French transcript rather than subtitles, use French audio to text.
FAQ
Questions about French sous-titres
Is the French subtitle generator free?
Yes. Subtitle 3 French videos a day, 30 minutes of each at most, with no account and no watermark, and keep the SRT, VTT and text files.
Can it make French subtitles for a video in English?
No. It writes down the French that is spoken and doesn’t translate. For an English video, make English subtitles first, translate the text of each subtitle into French and keep the numbers and times exactly as they are.
Does it add guillemets?
Not by itself. The subtitles carry the punctuation the transcription returns, and our French test had no quotation marks at all. Add « » or the double quotation marks your style guide prefers when you edit the file.
Does it mark a change of speaker?
No. Each subtitle carries the words only. French subtitles mark two speakers in one subtitle with a hyphen and a space at the start of each line, which you can add in a text editor.
Is my video uploaded?
No. The browser opens it on your device and keeps the picture there. Short pieces of its sound are sent over a secure connection to a cloud AI transcription service, which transcribes each one and discards it; NoteOwl stores nothing.
Keep exploring
More subtitle generator tools
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The same in other tools
French recordings into subtitles and notes on your Mac
Free to download. Runs entirely on your Mac.
macOS 26 or later · Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) · 16 GB memory minimum, 24 GB recommended
About NoteOwl
NoteOwl is private AI meeting notes and memory for the Mac. It captures meetings without a bot joining the call, labels every speaker, writes summaries and action items, and builds a memory of every conversation that you can chat with — fully offline, because the speech recognition and the AI run on the Mac itself. Dictation into any app is free; Pro is a one-time purchase.
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