Premiere Pro Transcriptions & Captions – Advanced Workflow Questions (Multi-Audio, Fine Control, Caption Management)

​@Jeena22389650a1ho,

Pickleball: I was awesome!

Really great set of questions. As noted by the couple of Beta posts below, staff are still actively improving these workflows.

2 The main answer is no, you can't edit in PR the timing of words in the transcript. As long as the transcript word occurs with the audio track sound, it shouldn't be necessary. But sounds are transcribed to a "word," and the timing in the transcript is set per "word." So I think your problem scenarios are occurring where there is inaccuracy in identifying words (multi-syllable?) and once edited, the sounds may not match the transcript highlighting. You can also see problems if adding information that is not spoken, e.g. a [Music] closed caption reference.

I'll point out at that accuracy may vary by PR version. See this new announcement in the Beta forum:
https://community.adobe.com/announcements-732/announcing-improvements-in-transcription-accuracy-and-speed-1555432?postid=1555432#post1555432

And this just after a bug with "wildly inaccurate" transcriptions was fixed. So that could affect your actual results and the priority of errors.

To actually edit timings, you might look at editing the json exported transcript. See this thread:
https://community.adobe.com/announcements-732/now-in-beta-import-your-own-transcript-311910?postid=311910#post311910

The json file times the beginning of a word in seconds from the beginning of the audio and sets the duration in seconds (floating point precision). Theoretically, these could be edited.

> If I edit multiple words in a phrase, playback highlighting breaks
> Premiere sometimes sticks on the first word of an edited phrase, then jumps forward after several seconds instead of tracking word-by-word

Longer edits where there are errors in transcription of the sounds are most likely to cause this?

3 I think you are correct about the current limitations. I believe that best practice is to make spelling etc edits in source media transcripts (not captions), since the sequence view of those transcripts makes the edit in the actual source media transcript. I make caption edits such as line breaks, timing, etc, once I have a locked edit. I often use temporary captions for editing - they are useful for "seeing" the transcript in the program monitor and where there may be multiple audio tracks and only one at a time will show in the transcript tab.

If I insert a clip to a sequence and want captions, I just create captions, and drag-select the new captions I want, and drag them to the old caption track, which will usually have an empty place there. Then delete the new caption track. Or, since I’m not concerned with caption level edits, I may just redo the whole track.

The answers to your 3 questions are probably apparent: no, no, and yes!

4 Correct, captions exist only in sequences. The full source media transcription is associated with the media file. Both captions and transcripts are actually saved in the project file.

5 There are 2, and 3, types of transcripts. lol. The 2 are 1) source media and 2) static/sequence. And the 3 are 2 “types” of source media 1) original clip and 2) sequence view of all the edited clips in the sequence and 3) the sequence/static transcript (which does not change as you edit). If you open a clip in the source monitor and click in the transcript view, it will follow along (highlight) as it plays. If you click in the timeline, watch the program monitor, and follow in the transcript tab (in program monitor view), it will follow along. This is usually true when you have the "Follow active monitor" box checked in the bottom left of the transcript tab. If you have it unchecked, and in Program monitor mode, and play in the Source monitor, it will not highlight progress.

When you edit a source media transcription in sequence/program monitor view, it updates the source clip’s transcription. Some edits cannot be made to that full clip transcription. For example, you cannot delete pauses in that transcript, only in the clip instance transcript used by the sequence.

Stan

​@Jeena22389650a1ho,

1 > How does Premiere decide what transcription to display?

The highest ranking (upper-most/lowest numbered) audio track that is transcribed and is not muted is the one that shows. Only muting works: soloing a track does not result in it showing.

You can also delete a section of an audio track to allow a lower one to show through. Silence does NOT result in a transcript showing.

Do you ever want the scratch audio to be used? If not, just put the lav on A1. Or don’t transcribe that clip.

Pickleball calls… More later.

Stan