Participant

Question

Export is burning in captions when I've turned it off

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
March 5, 2026
2 replies
63 views

I’ve got a project that on export is burning in captions despite setting it to just create a sidecar file. The odd thing is that I have another project from a week or so ago that is able to export properly without burnt in captions.

The one that doesn’t work, the sequences have an AE file, it’s a full animation/motion graphics project. The captions are in a normal subtitle track. The project that doesn’t have issues exporting with a sidecar file, that’s got a video track with a ProRes master, some AE supers, and a normal subtitle track.

I’ve tried saving an export preset from the project file that’s working, that didn’t work. For the life of me I can’t see a setting in the project or export options that would be forcing the subtitles. Same languages and font usage, nothing has changed in my approach to this new project that’s not exporting properly.

I’ve also tried changing settings in ME but that doesn’t seem to solve the issue either. The captions still burn in in ME or if I got sequence by sequence in PP.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

@James Nolan30864664nhqx

Hi, James.

If I was experiencing this, I'd create a duplicate Sequence, append something like “_no_subtitle_track” to the name of the Sequence, delete the Captions track, and then try exporting.

It’s extra steps that should not be necessary, but stands a good chance of getting you a finished file without burned in captions. The original Sequence can be used to export an SRT (or whichever captions file format that needs to go with your movie).

- Warren

J

James Nolan30864664nhqxAuthor

Participant

Hi @Warren Heaton,

Thanks for the suggestion. In most of my use cases I’m outputting a lot of files with captions for a single job. So while that might be a solution for a single sequence, when I’m working with 10 languages each in their own sequence, it would be much to tedious.

I did manage to find a workaround that doesn’t require much effort, copied from my other replies, “...render and replace for the AE on V1 solved the problem. Also, simply moving the AE comp up to V2 solved the issue too. I’ve exported with both those approaches and it worked to stop captions burning in.”

I think this might actually be a bug with how Premiere is handling captions on a sequence with only an AE comp on V1.

J

James Nolan30864664nhqxAuthor

Participant

Ok so I’ve experimented a bit as I suspect the AE file being the only item on V1 could be an issue. So if I render and replace the AE, the captions no longer burn in. Seemingly, if I just move the AE up into V2 then the captions no longer burn in.

I’m not sure if this is a bug, or perhaps something deeper in the project or timeline setup.

Stan Jones

Community Expert

@James Nolan30864664nhqx,

What PR version are you using? There was a problem with disabled captions burning in if there was a linked after effects comp. I can’t find the post, and I never replicated it. It was reported to fixed in 25.4, but there have been reports of the same symptom.

Test by importing back to PR. Some users get a false reading by using a player such as VLC which may automatically include captions from a sidecar file that may have been exported previously. I doubt that is what you are seeing.

Stan

J

James Nolan30864664nhqxAuthor

Participant

Hi @Stan Jones ,

I’m on the latest releases for PR and AE. I have in previous versions had issues with captions burning in that was solved by that previous fix, so I was taken surprise by it happening this time.

They’re definitely burning in, having tested in VLC and quicktime (it’s fairly obvious as the video displays with the particular look I use during proofreading with my translators).

So ultimately, as mention, render and replace for the AE on V1 solved the problem. Also, simply moving the AE comp up to V2 solved the issue too. I’ve exported with both those approaches and it worked to stop captions burning in.

If it helps with trying to recreate it, the AE comp has a VO track, and there’s a music track in PR. Captions are just on a normal caption track. The only options I change in export are setting to CBR at 25mbps, sidecar for captions (SRT) and loudness normalisation.

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