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FAQ: Automatic closed captions

This feature requires a Standard, Advanced, Pro, Business, Premium, or Enterprise plan.

This article addresses common questions we've received about automatic closed captions (Auto-CC).

In this article:

Which videos are eligible for automatic closed captions (Auto CC)?

Automatic captions are only generated for videos that are 8 hours or less in length. They will also only apply to videos uploaded after May 2022.

Why would Auto CC fail for my video?

Auto CC for your video may fail for several reasons:

  • If it contains silence for the first 30 seconds, the software won't detect any speech to transcribe.
  • If it contains music or background noise louder than the speaker, it has stereo audio that is out of phase or has poor audio quality.
  • If the language spoken in the video isn’t supported by Auto CC.

If your video does not have any of these, and you continue to experience issues with Auto CC, please contact Support.

What languages are available for automatic closed captions?

Automatic closed captions are available in: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Assamese, Asturian, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Bengali, Bosnian, Catalan, Cebuano, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Estonian, Persian, Fulah, Finnish, Filipino, French, Irish, Galician, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Armenian, Indonesian, Igbo, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Georgian, Kabuverdianu, Kazakh, Khmer, Kannada, Korean, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Luxembourgish, Ganda, Lingala, Lao, Lithuanian, Luo, Latvian, Maori, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mongolian, Marathi, Malay, Maltese, Burmese, Nepali, Dutch, Norwegian, Northern Sotho, Nyanja, Occitan, Odia, Punjabi, Polish, Pashto, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sindhi, Slovak, Slovenian, Shona, Somali, Serbian, Swedish, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Tajik, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Umbundu, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Wolof, Xhosa, Chinese, Cantonese (Hong Kong), Zulu.

If you want to offer more language tracks to that video, you’ll need to upload a separate subtitle or caption file.

⚠️Note: Captions that are generated automatically are labeled as "Autogenerated” to let viewers know and to distinguish them from manually uploaded captions.

Why don't my older videos have Auto CC?

Vimeo offers automatic closed captioning to all paid members for videos uploaded after May 25, 2022. This means that all videos will be automatically transcribed by our system during the upload process. If your video was uploaded before May 25, 2022, re-uploading your video will generate automatic closed captions.

How does Auto CC work for live events?

Starting June 1, 2026, live caption hours convert to AI credits. See Live caption hours are becoming AI credits for details.

Auto CC is available for live events, but there are different limitations in place:

  • Premium and Advanced members get up to 2 hours of live auto CC for their events per year.
  • Enterprise members receive up to 30 hours of live auto-CC for their events per year.
  • Visit Automatic Closed Captioning for Live Events for instructions on enabling and using Auto CC for events.

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