Burned-in captions vs platform auto-captions: which to use

Every major platform offers automatic captions now, which raises a fair question: why burn captions into the video at all?

Platform captions are convenient — free, toggleable, and editable after upload — but you don't control their font, size, position, or timing, they can land in the UI safe zone, and they don't travel with the file when you post it elsewhere.

Burned-in captions are part of the video: consistent styling that matches your brand, controlled placement inside the safe area, reliable across every platform, and visible even where a viewer has captions turned off (which is common). The tradeoff is they're permanent — a typo means a re-export.

The common approach is burned-in as the primary, styled for readability at thumbnail size, and letting the platform layer its own on top for accessibility.

OptimaClip burns in styled captions as part of the clip pass, positioned in the safe zone, so the clip reads correctly the moment it's posted anywhere — with an accuracy check step so the permanent text isn't a permanent typo.