Burned-in text: a subtitle that cannot be turned off
Burned-in text is rendered permanently into the frame rather than carried as a separate file. It is the norm in vertical short video, and it means a language change requires a new render rather than a new file. As of 2026-09-22.
| Property | Separate file | Burned in |
|---|---|---|
| Can be switched off | Yes | No |
| Cost of another language | Another file | Another render |
| Guaranteed to look the same everywhere | No | Yes |
| Searchable by a platform | Yes | No |
Inclusion rule. The two ways text reaches a viewer over a picture, compared on what each costs and guarantees. Order. Fixed order, the switchable form first.
1Vertical short video burns almost everything in
Autoplay without sound, small screens and platforms that strip subtitle files all push text into the picture. It guarantees the styling survives and guarantees a viewer cannot remove it.
The cost lands on a multi-language release. Every language becomes a separate export of the whole video rather than a small file beside one export, which multiplies storage and versioning rather than translation.
2It is also what makes a mistake permanent
A wrong line in a separate file is a file edit. The same line burned in is a re-render of the segment it appears in, and in a generated pipeline that can mean regenerating the picture as well.
So burned-in text raises the value of getting the translation right the first time, which is an argument for translating at the script stage rather than after the picture exists.
3Nothing in this register says which vendors do it
No vendor read for this register publishes whether its subtitle output is a file or is rendered into the frame. One publishes a count of subtitle languages and nothing about the form they arrive in.
That is a small gap with a large practical consequence, and it is the kind of thing a language figure cannot express. It belongs to the shape of the deliverable rather than to the list of languages.
A definition, not a measurement: no vendor figure appears here that is not also in the register. The subtitle figure published here is recorded outside the three language columns.
Nearby terms: Subtitle, Text inside the frame. The whole vocabulary is at terms; nothing on this page is a claim about a named product.