lag and delay when captions are enabled

Hi everyone,

I’m experiencing heavy lag in Adobe Premiere Pro 2025 and I’ve narrowed it down to captions/subtitles being the main culprit. I wanted to ask if anyone has found good workflows or workarounds so captions can stay visible without slowing the timeline too much.

Observed behavior:

Timeline playback initially lags but becomes smoother after a few seconds.

Moving clips or repositioning video layers becomes very delayed.

Typing text becomes extremely laggy + delayed.

When I hide the captions track, everything becomes smooth again immediately.

I actually need captions visible while editing for extra comprehension (lol), so keeping them hidden isn’t ideal for my workflow.

Questions:

Is this a known limitation of captions in long-form timelines?

Are there recommended workflows for editing long podcast/multicam projects with captions enabled?

Are there caption settings or preferences that reduce timeline redraw or processing load?

Any advice or workflows from editors who regularly cut long-form content with subtitles would be greatly appreciated.

Is splitting the timeline into shorter sequences the best practice here, or are there other optimizations? (My answer) My last resort. T_T

Thanks in advance. Happy editing!