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How to make a lyric video

Put your song on a timeline over a backdrop, add the lyrics one line at a time, and start each line when it’s sung. Make it 16:9 at 1920 × 1080 for YouTube, or 9:16 at 1080 × 1920 for Reels, TikTok and Shorts. CapCut, Canva and iMovie are free; the slow part is timing every line.

By Plastic · Updated 13 October 2026 · 10 min read

In this guide
  1. What a lyric video is
  2. What you need
  3. How to make a lyric video by hand
  4. What AI lyric video makers actually do
  5. Lyric video makers compared
  6. How to sync the words to the beat
  7. Make the words easy to read
  8. The quick way to vertical lyric clips: Clips
  9. Questions

What a lyric video is

A lyric video is your song with its words on screen, in time with the voice. It’s cheaper to make than a music video, and it gives people the words to sing along to. There are two kinds, and they’re made differently.

  • A full lyric video

    The whole song, start to end, for YouTube

    16:9, 1920 × 1080

  • Vertical lyric clips

    One part of the song, often the hook, for Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts and ads

    9:16, 1080 × 1920

YouTube’s standard shape on a computer is 16:9. A square or vertical video up to three minutes long counts as a Short. You can make both kinds: the full video for YouTube, and short clips to post and run as ads.

YouTube1920 × 1080 · the whole song

Reels, TikTok, Shorts1080 × 1920 · one part

A lyric clip won’t work as a Spotify Canvas, though: the Canvas isn’t synced to your song, so the words would land out of time.

What you need

  • The song, mixed and mastered, as a WAV or MP3.
  • The lyrics, typed out as they’re sung. Include every repeat and ad-lib, and break the lines where the singer breathes. Each line becomes one caption.
  • A backdrop: footage from a shoot, phone clips, photos or your cover art.
  • The tempo, if you want cuts on the beat. The free BPM finder reads it from your file.

How to make a lyric video by hand

  1. Set the size first: 16:9 for YouTube, 9:16 for vertical clips.
  2. Put the song on the timeline, and the backdrop under it for its whole length.
  3. Add one text title per lyric line. Style the first one (font, size, color), then copy it for the next line, so every line looks the same.
  4. Time each title to the voice. Zoom into the waveform. Drag the title’s start to the line’s first sung syllable, and its end to just before the next line. In iMovie, you drag either edge of the title in the timeline.
  5. Play it through at full speed, and fix the lines that land early or late.
  6. Export an MP4 at the size you set.

The timing is the slow part: a full song has dozens of lines, and each needs a start and an end.

What AI lyric video makers actually do

Automatic captions and AI lyric video makers promise to do the timing for you. Here’s what they actually do.

  • The editors’ automatic captions are built for speech. CapCut’s Auto lyrics writes the sung words as timed captions, but CapCut’s help center says it’s fully supported only in the phone app. On the Mac, CapCut’s Auto captions, Final Cut Pro’s Generate Captions and Premiere’s Speech to Text turn spoken words into captions. Apple warns that music can affect the accuracy and timing.
  • Rotor takes your lyrics, syncs them to the track, and builds the video from its library of more than 17 million stock clips. Previews are free, with a watermark; you pay to download.
  • Neural Frames listens to the song, writes down the lyrics and times them, then makes AI-generated pictures to match the words. You can fix the wording and the timing, and export 16:9 or 9:16.

Whichever you use, give it the real words when it lets you, and watch the whole video before you post.

“In CapCut, the automatic lyrics came out wrong, and fixing them was buggy. Final Cut was worse. Every new hook line or backdrop meant opening the editor again. I was losing whole evenings I could have spent making music.”

Kai Williams, music artist and creator of Clips

Lyric video makers compared

  • CapCut

    Lyric text styles; Auto lyrics in the phone app, auto captions on the Mac

    Free; Pro $19.99 a month. Mac app

  • Canva

    62 landscape lyric video templates, and beat markers to snap text to

    Free; Pro $144 a year. Mac app or browser

  • iMovie

    The full 16:9 video for YouTube, timed by hand

    Free, from Apple

  • Final Cut Pro

    Exact timing, vertical versions of a project, captions from speech

    $299.99 once

  • Adobe Premiere (formerly Premiere Pro)

    Captions from speech, even one word at a time

    $22.99 a month, on a yearly plan

  • Rotor

    Syncs your lyrics over stock clips

    4 credits ($39.96) a lyric video, or $14.99 a month billed yearly. Online

  • Neural Frames

    Writes down and times the lyrics itself, over AI-made pictures

    From $26 a month, billed yearly. Online

  • Clips

    Vertical lyric clips for every part of the song, synced word by word

    Free, with a small tag on exports; $99 once. macOS 13 or later

Prices are as of October 2026. Two limits to know: iMovie’s crop frame is locked to 16:9, so it’s for the YouTube version, not vertical clips. Most of Canva’s lyric templates are marked Pro.

How to sync the words to the beat

A lyric video runs on two clocks. The words follow the voice; the cuts follow the beat.

  • Start each line on its first sung syllable. A line that shows up a hair early reads as in time. A late one reads as wrong.
  • Pick word by word or line by line. One big word at a time suits short vertical clips and fast lines. A full line at a time is easier to read in a slow song or a full-length video.
  • Cut the backdrop on the beat, ideally at the start of a bar. At 120 BPM a bar of 4/4 lasts 2 seconds. In Canva, Beat Sync shows beat markers you can snap text and clips to.
  • Change something when a new part starts: another backdrop, another color, a new hook line. The song structure guide shows how to find the parts.
  • Time the first chorus carefully, then copy it. Paste its titles at the next chorus and slide them into place, checking every line.
Each word starts where it’s sung. The line leaves before the next one comes in.

Make the words easy to read

  • Go big. Most people watch on a phone. If the words look a little too big on your screen, they’re about right.
  • One or two lines at a time, never a whole verse.
  • Keep the contrast high. Light text on a dark picture, or dark on light. Over busy footage, darken the backdrop or put a soft dark band behind the words.
  • One plain font for the lyrics, and one color. Save the fancy font for the title.
  • Keep text out of the edges. On Reels, Meta suggests leaving at least 14% of the top, 35% of the bottom and 6% of each side free of text. TikTok and Shorts cover the edges too. Drop a frame into the free safe zone checker to see what each app covers.
Reels: keep words out of the top 14%, the bottom 35% and 6% at each side.

The quick way to vertical lyric clips: Clips

Clips is a Mac app for the vertical kind. Drop in the song, your footage or photos, and your lyrics as a text file. It finds the tempo and every part: intro, verses, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, outro. Each part becomes one vertical clip, cut on the beat.

It syncs your lyrics word by word, automatically. You don’t have to set any timings: the few words it isn’t sure of go to a short check, where you play the line and tap when you hear the word. Show the lyrics word by word or line by line, add a hook line on top, and pick a layout and one of 54 effects. Every text stays inside the safe zone you pick, and the same look goes on every part.

Export makes every part on every backdrop at once, as 1080 × 1920 vertical videos or 1080 × 1080 square posts, named by song and part (“Bad to You – Chorus.mp4”). It works offline, so an unreleased song never leaves your Mac.

What Clips doesn’t do: it doesn’t make a full-length 16:9 lyric video for YouTube. Use iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Premiere or Canva for that one, and Clips for the vertical clips around it. It doesn’t write your lyrics down either: you bring the words, and it times them.

Questions

What’s the free way to make a lyric video?

CapCut, Canva and iMovie are free. iMovie makes the 16:9 YouTube version; CapCut and Canva make either shape. Clips is free too, with a small Clips tag on its exports until you buy it.

How long does it take to make a lyric video?

By hand, most of the time goes into timing the lines, and a full song can take an evening. Automatic captions cut that down, but you still check every word. Clips makes vertical clips for every part of a song in a few minutes.

What size should a lyric video be for YouTube and for Reels?

For YouTube, 16:9 at 1920 × 1080, or 3840 × 2160 for 4K. For Reels, TikTok and Shorts, 9:16, usually 1080 × 1920. Meta’s Reels ad guide suggests 1440 × 2560, and TikTok asks for at least 720p.

Can AI sync lyrics to a song?

Yes, but check the result. The tools time the words by listening to the voice, and singing over a beat is harder for them than speech. They do better with your lyrics than when they have to guess them.

Can I use my cover art as the backdrop?

Yes. Give the still some movement, like a slow zoom (iMovie calls it the Ken Burns effect) or an effect on top. Clips animates stills with a slow push. If someone else made the art, check that your agreement with them covers video.

Will YouTube flag a lyric video of my own song?

It may. If your distributor sends your song to YouTube’s Content ID, your own upload can get a claim. With DistroKid, that claim means ads run on the video and the money comes to you, and you can allowlist the video afterwards. Shorts are stricter: YouTube blocks a Short over one minute that has any active copyright claim, so keep vertical clips under a minute.

Sources

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