Most people watch video pins with the sound off, and many decide in the first second whether to keep watching. A short title on the video tells them what it is about without sound: the recipe, the room, the three steps. It also gives Pinterest readable words to match the pin to searches.
This tool plays your clip in the browser, draws your title and a small second line on top, and records the result. Pick the position, one of three text styles and a font, and choose whether the text stays for the whole video or only the start or the end. You can keep the video size or crop it to a Pinterest shape at the same time. Your video is never uploaded.
What to write on a video pin
Write what the viewer gets, in six words or fewer if you can: "5 minute weeknight pasta", "Small balcony makeover", "How to fold a fitted sheet". Use the words someone would type into the Pinterest search box, since those are the words you want the pin found for.
Use the small line for your site name or a simple next step like "Full recipe on the blog". For more wording ideas, try the Pinterest title generator and the hook ideas tool.
Where and when to show the text
On a full screen 9:16 video, Pinterest covers part of the picture with its own buttons: about 270 pixels at the top and 790 at the bottom of a 1080 x 1920 video. The center position is the safest there. On 2:3, 4:5 and square videos the top and bottom positions are fine.
Text for the whole video suits short clips and loops. "The first 3 seconds" works as a hook that then gets out of the way, and "the last 3 seconds" works as a closing call to action. The text fades in and out, so it never flashes.
File format and sound
Recent Chrome, Edge and Safari record MP4, which Pinterest accepts. Firefox records WebM, which needs converting first; the tool tells you which one you got. The sound of your clip is kept when the browser can record sound into an MP4 file, which Chrome and Edge on Windows and Mac and Safari can; if it cannot, the tool says the video is silent.
If your clip is the wrong shape for Pinterest, choose a size here to crop it, or use the Pinterest video resizer first to keep the whole picture over a blurred background.
