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Blooming Rock
Blooming Rock
Participating Frequently
August 15, 2023
Question

No longer possible to add captions to existing track?

  • August 15, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 859 views

It used to be possible to mark in and out points on the timeline, transcribe that section, and then hit cc to create captions AND have those subtitles added to the existing subtitle track. After updating to the most recent version 23.5 this is no longer possible, according to Adobe help center. It always puts the new section onto a new subtitle track, and greys out the other ones.

 

The ridiculous workaround, according to Adobe help center:

Add a transparent video track to the timeline and nest it with the new captions. That way, you can see both the old captions on the first subtitle track and the new captions as a nested sequence.

 

This means you'll have to keep adding transparent videos and nested sequences to your timeline for every new section of transcript. Plus you can't edit the subtitles or the style and push changes to all the other subtitles on the track.

 

Does someone else have a sensible idea? Also, how can I make an official request to Adobe to put this basic function back?

    1 reply

    Stan Jones
    Community Expert
    Stan JonesCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 16, 2023

    @Blooming Rock,


    I don't think it ever worked that way. It would require some kind of option to "add to" the caption track and that doesn't exist.


    Yes, you can transcribe in to out. And you can use that in-to-out to a) replace the entire transcript or b) merge with the current transcript, so that you could keep edits etc in the section not re-transcribed. BUT it creates a new caption track from the "new" transcript (all of it). And if you have edited Captions (not the transcript) you definitely do not want to replace those adjusted captions.

     

    The easiest workaround is just to copy the new captions into the old track.

     

    I would make a "backup" by duplicating the sequence in the Project Panel just before doing this.

     

    1. Drag-select the old captions that you do not want. Delete.
    2. Set the playhead to the beginning of the first "new" caption.
    3. Drag-select all the new captions.
    4. Alt-drag the new captions to the old track so they snap to the playhead.
    5. Right-click the new caption track and delete it.

     

    • Copying, not moving, avoids a bug with moving captions.
    • Setting the playhead avoids accidentally moving the timing.
    • Copy/pasting will work, but I find it confusing for many users because it gets into the relatively recent reassignment of Ctrl + V in the timeline panel to only paste to the same track.
    • This appears to work whether either track is targeted and/or active. But targeting does affect other shortcuts. If you are using the default PR keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl + Alt + Up/down moves between caption segments in the active track, even if the track is not targeted. Regular Up/Down moves between segments in targeted tracks, even if they are not active.
    • Deleting the old captions first avoids leaving old captions that are not overwritten by individual new captions. The new caption segments will only overwrite the exact parts of the old segments that they cover. So, for example, if an old caption starts before a new one or ends after, etc, the copy operation will split the old caption and leave it with a timecode for the part of the old caption that is not covered by the new caption. As with the "split" command, this leaves the entire caption text.

     

    This is an update of my post here:

    https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/how-do-i-copy-existing-captions-into-a-new-layer-of-updated-captions/m-p/13961045#M470879

     

    The problem related to moving caption segments to other tracks is discussed here. This affects 23.6; I am not sure about earlier versions.

    https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/subtitle-track-issue-subtitle-error/m-p/13959292#M470797

     

    Stan

     

     

     

    Blooming Rock
    Blooming RockAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    September 5, 2023

    Hi Stan,

    Thanks for your reply! Sorry I caused some confusion: the "merge output with existing transcription" is exactly the feature that I was used to using that would add newly transcribed captions to the existing subtitle track without changing the old captions.  After the update it was moved to under the "Create static transcript" option - that's what I was looking for but couldn't remember what it was called.

     

    But my frustration is that for some reason (as you pointed out), everything gets re-transcribed into a new subtitle track, not just the in-to-out points, and it does not preserve any changes I made in the transcript (I have tried making edits in both the transcript panel and in the captions, neither is preserved).

     

    I hit upon the same workaround you did, delete-move captions and delete track, but I was hoping for something other than a workaround. The work I do requires subtitling sections of a timeline a little at a time. It seems with the update, I either have to submit to having dozens of subtitle tracks or manually merging the new subtitles each time. There may not be an easy way to do this any more. 

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