I got tired of expensive subtitle tools, so I built my own

I've been messing around with videos for a while, both helping a mate out with some of their YouTube videos and doing a few things of my own.

One of the things that kept slowing me down was creating subtitles.

I was using DaVinci Resolve for a lot of this, and while it can obviously handle subtitles, I found myself spending quite a lot of time getting everything configured properly. Timing, formatting, styles, all the little things that you don't really want to be spending your time on when the actual point is just to get a video finished.

So I started looking around for something that could do more of the work for me. I came across a few of the more mainstream subtitling services, things like VEED and Kapwing, and they were doing pretty much what I was looking for.

The thing that caught my attention was the price.

That might not be a huge issue if you're running a business or a YouTube channel that's already making decent money, but I was also thinking about the smaller channels I was helping. A lot of people are still trying to get started, aren't making any money from their videos yet, and probably aren't going to want to spend a significant amount every month just to get subtitles on their videos.

And that's not even getting into people in countries where that sort of monthly subscription is a much bigger expense compared to what they earn.

It made me think that there was probably room for something aimed more at those people who are starting out and may not have the spare funds for these more expensive options, but dont want to sacrifice quality . Something that could give them access to the same sort of automated subtitling without needing to spend a lot of money to get started.

That became the idea behind Subify.

I wanted to build something that wasn't just able to generate subtitles, but could give people some of the flexibility you'd expect from the more established services. Different subtitle formats, styling options, the ability to burn subtitles directly into a video, and eventually things like word by word synchronising and karaoke style subtitles, translation as well.

Privacy was something I wanted to take seriously too. When you're uploading personal videos, old home recordings or other content that you might not want sitting around on somebody else's servers indefinitely, I wanted that to be something I considered from the beginning.

I've actually used the sort of workflow I was building for my own stuff too. I digitised some old VHS home videos and subtitles are one of those things that can make old footage a lot more accessible. Instead of manually working through the timing for hours, being able to upload the video and have the subtitles generated automatically seemed like a much better way of doing it.

So I decided I'd try to build it.

There was just one small problem.

I didn't really know how to build it.

I've always liked the idea of learning new things and picking up new skills, so I decided to see if I could figure it out. What started as a thought of "surely I can make something that does this" turned into months of learning how all the different pieces needed to work together and figuring things out as I went.

I ended up spending a lot more time on it than I originally expected if Im honest. Eventually, after a lot of trial and error, I managed to get the service into a state where I could actually deploy it. Where everything is working exactly as it should, still has all the privacy focused stuff handled that I wanted to have in this project.

And that's how Subify.co.uk came about.

The basic idea is pretty simple. Upload a video or audio file, let it generate the subtitles, and get the subtitle file back without having to manually work through all the timing yourself.

I've tried to keep the pricing low as well. The cheapest plan works out at £2 a month when paid annually, or £2.50 if you pay monthly.

I'm not going to pretend I've suddenly built the next big SaaS company. I'm very much figuring this out as I go.

But the product is live now, which is something I wasn't entirely sure I'd manage when I started.

And, as I'm discovering, actually building the thing is only one part of the problem.

Now I have to figure out how to get anyone to use it.

That's probably where the next part of this story starts.