Need help: Horizontal video > Vertical short (with captions)

Greetings,

I'm currently running two separate Youtube channels, and finding that converting my standard, horizontal videos (5-15m in length) to a vertical short with captions is insanely frustrating.

Some platforms offer captions, others don't, some automatically clip for you (as opposed to manual), others don't. Some don't even offer a trial so I can't tell if they work.

Goal: to upload a 10-min horizontal video, have 5-10 vertical shorts generated to pick from (with branding intact once I set it initially), pick 2 or 3 & download them, and not have to touch my video editor again once the long-form video is done.

Have you found any cloud or local software that is capable of this?

I've tried so far:

-Davinci resolve: decent for main video editing - NIGHTMARE for shorts. It should be way simpler, and can't do captions for free.
-Capcut: captions also not free...if I'm going to pay I'd rather the clips be auto-selected. Requires a lot of work & not free.
-Headliner: Crops to 'fill', meaning it cuts off both sides. This is not ideal - I'm not a gaming channel, I'm informational, so I need it zoomed out a bit. No option to fix here.
-Qlip: Nightmare. You have to change the position of the textbox once at a time. Fills the crop automatically, with an option to manually change. For the reframe & caption option, I'd then have to head back to Davinci & cut up the shorts there - inefficient.
-Munch: I've heard fantastic things about its cropping, captioning & auto-clipping abilities, but there's no free trial & it starts at $38 per month! I'd consider doing it if I knew for sure it'd save me hours per month, but otherwise that's a prohibitive price.