Back in December 2023, Microsoft announced that the web edition of its PowerPoint presentation app added support for inserting videos that include captions. However, these subtitles must be created in WebVTT format before they are inserted into the PowerPoint video.

Today, Microsoft announced an upcoming PowerPoint web feature that should make it much easier to add subtitles to videos. in the post On the Microsoft 365 Insider blogThe application will add a speech recognition feature that will listen to the audio in the PowerPoint video and automatically create the subtitles.

Microsoft says that once the feature is in place, users who insert their video into a presentation file can click Subtitles option, scroll through the 63 languages ​​this feature supports, select the languages ​​that best match the video, and then click Create captions.

The company says the feature will scan a two-hour video in the PowerPoint app, and should produce the subtitles in minutes. Once this is done, the user can go in and make any corrections to the auto-captions by clicking on Edit subtitles button. The video will play itself automatically when you reach the subtitle section that you need to edit.

Microsoft has added some tips for using this upcoming feature. When users go into the subtitle editor, they can also add the names of each speaker in the video, along with all the important sounds heard in the clip.

The automatic subtitles feature can also be used to translate the video into any of the 63 supported languages, opening up the PowerPoint video to a wider audience.

You’ll have to wait a little longer to try the new, faster video captioning feature. Microsoft says it will be added to PowerPoint on the web sometime in June.