Free · Files up to 1 hour · SRT download

Pinyin Subtitles

Add pinyin subtitles to Mandarin video. AI transcribes the Chinese and shows tone-marked pinyin under each line, made for learners and lyric videos.

Free for recordings up to 1 hour and 1 GB. Longer files need a paid plan.

How It Works

How to use the pinyin subtitles

01

Upload your file

Drop the Chinese audio or video you want rewritten.

02

Transcribe and romanize

The speech is transcribed, then every line is written in Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks.

03

Download subtitles

Download the SRT or VTT, or copy the text — the original-language file comes with it.

What is the pinyin subtitles?

The Pinyin Subtitles is a free online tool from ShortsHero: mandarin with pinyin under it. The speech is transcribed by AssemblyAI, then every line is translated with its timings kept — usually under a minute for a 5-minute file. It is free for files up to 1 hour; longer recordings need a paid plan.

Chinese is in AssemblyAI's good-accuracy tier, with a typical word error rate of 10–25% on clear speech. Chinese also runs on AssemblyAI's newest Universal-3.5 Pro model, which handles regional accents and mixed-language speech.

Free transcription covers files up to 1 hour. If your recording is longer, a paid plan lifts the limit — or trim it into parts and run each one.

Why Use This Tool

What the pinyin subtitles gives you

Written in Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks

Line by line, so every subtitle keeps the timing of the speech it came from.

Original transcript included

You get the source-language subtitles too, to check or reuse.

SRT and VTT

Ready for YouTube, Vimeo, Premiere, Resolve and every major player.

Up to 1 hour free

Whole recordings, not a sample.

No watermark, no sign-up

Use the files anywhere — the transcript and subtitles are yours.

Edit before you publish

Open the SRT in our free subtitle editor to correct names and terms.

FAQ

Common questions

Still stuck? Email us.

Is this pinyin subtitles free?

Yes. Files up to 1 hour long are free, with no watermark and no account needed. Recordings longer than 1 hour need a paid ShortsHero plan.

How accurate is the Chinese transcription?

Chinese is in AssemblyAI's good-accuracy tier, with a typical word error rate of 10–25% on clear speech. Chinese also runs on AssemblyAI's newest Universal-3.5 Pro model, which handles regional accents and mixed-language speech. Accuracy drops with music, crosstalk and distant microphones, so check names and technical terms before you publish.

Which files can I upload?

MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV, MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, FLAC and most other audio and video formats, up to 1 GB. For a long video, uploading just the audio is faster.

Is this a translation?

No — the words stay in the original language and are written in Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks, so you can read along without knowing the original script.

How long does it take?

Usually well under the length of the recording — a 10-minute file is typically done in about a minute.

What else can ShortsHero do?

ShortsHero turns long videos into short vertical clips with AI moment detection, face tracking and animated captions — and has free tools for subtitles, transcripts and video formats.

Got a long video? Make it Shorts.

The same transcription powers ShortsHero's clip maker: it finds the strongest moments, reframes them to vertical and adds word-by-word captions in 36 styles.

Try the clip maker free

Free to start · No credit card required