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Jessica Nuñez
Community Manager
Jessica NuñezCommunity Manager
Community Manager
February 4, 2022
Question

Discuss: Captions Validation: Overflow & Line Length

  • February 4, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 9055 views

Premiere Pro Beta now has real time captions validation to check for overflow and line length errors in active and non-active captions tracks!

 

For subtitles (popular for YouTube), the overflow validator will return errors if the caption is overflowing past the captions bounding

 

For all other captions captions (including broadcast formats such as 608, 708), the line length validator will return errors if the caption line length is too long for the captions track Here are the line length constraints per format: Australian OP-47 = 37; CEA-608 = 32; CEA-708 = 42; EBU Subtitle = 37; Teletext - 37

 

Both types of captions errors are identified and flagged with a cautionary triangle in the captions track header and in the text panel and a white cautionary triangle in the Caption track segment. Upon hovering on the error in the text panel or segment, the tool tip provides an error explanation in both the timeline and the text panel.

 

 

Fixing Errors

 

Double click on the captions to fix the error in the text panel or program monitor.

 

 

Error Filtering

 

Looking to see all your captions validation errors in one place? The text panel allows for filtering for caption blocks with errors.

 

 

Navigation of Errors in the Timeline

 

For navigation, it is provided by clicking on the warning badge in the Caption track header. Click will move playhead forward to next segment’s In point with error and auto-select the segment. Alt/Opt-click will move playhead backwards to previous segment’s In point and auto-select segment. Forward & Backward navigation will “wrap-around”. eg: at last warning segment and you click track header badge = goes to first warning segment. Navigation only applies to the Caption track segments that you click the track header badge for. If there is only one segment with warning, then still moves playhead forward to segment’s In point with error and auto-selects the segment. Clicking track header badge again doesn’t do anything, just keeps Playhead location and segment selection.

 

Turn on and Off

 

Easily turn off the validation errors in the timeline to minimize visual distractions.

 

 

 

Feedback

 

Are there other captions state for which validation would be useful for (i.e. number of characters, spacing, number of lines, font, background color)?

  

We want to know what you think.  Please join the conversation below.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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    3 replies

    Russ Lickteig
    Russ Lickteig
    Inspiring
    June 14, 2022

    Great feature to have for sure.  Appreciate the addition.  I am really curious though when you all will be turning on the "Merge output wth existing transcription" option when transcribing.  I am assuming this means we will be able to upload an existing approved script to use while auto transcribing for better spelling and for work with acronyms and so on?

     

      Stan Jones
      Stan Jones
      Community Expert
      June 14, 2022

      Sorry, Russ, but I don't think that is what is planned. See "Merge output with existing transcription" in the Speech to Text help page:

      https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/speech-to-text.html

       

      When using the "in to out," you can elect to create a new transcription of just the in to out, or to merge the new "in to out" part with the "existing" (i.e. the non-"in to out" of the old) transcript.

       

      I looked for one of the related User Voice requests, and .... lol ... found YOURS!

      https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/43157127-could-we-use-adobe-sensei-to-timecode-an-existing

       

      Only 18 votes and no staff reaction. Note that you can now also show whether you rate "How important is this to you?" - Not at all; Important; Critical. I already upvoted it in the past, and added a rating.

       

      Stan

       

      Russ Lickteig
      Russ Lickteig
      Inspiring
      June 15, 2022

      Hey Stan!  Thanks for the info and YES I have been asking for this! 🙂

       

      Here is a message I received from Francis Crossman after asking him directly.  

       

      "From: Francis-Crossman
      Date: Mar 04, 2022 08:51 AM

      Hi Russ, sorry for leaving you hanging.  I don't check my DMs on this forum as often as I should.  

      1.  Removing the safe margin - we have heard from a lot of people that they want this removed.  We put it in place to help people ensure their captions are in the right place.  I think we should we should provide an option to remove that limitation, yes.  Can you tell me why you need the captions to be right at the edge of the frame?
      2. Upload an approved script - yes!  This is in our plans and it would make the transcription more accurate.  We also have plans for you to create a custom dictionary so that we can deal with those acronyms and proper nouns correctly.  I can't share a timeframe for these improvements, but they are coming.  In the meantime you can do bulk find and replace which is an extra step, I know, but will help automate the correction process.

       

      Thanks for reaching out - Francis "

      I was very excited to see this message from Francis....this is like I have probably said a million times in the Forums a true game-changer to my current workflow.  

        T
        tonyt15193621
        New Participant
        April 19, 2022

        To do professional line length:

        Frist, from Telestream Caption Maker, Adobe needs to Push Last Word and Pull First Word between caption blocks.  Content wise, text should break at prepositional phrases. So if the last word is "to" in a text block, I need to push it to the next text block.

        Second, top line text should be shorter than bottom line text to form a pyramid.  Expand and compress text lines within text blocks would be nice.  And if it's not valid, you make a new block and push and pull back and forth.

          T
          Community Manager
          Trent HappelCommunity Manager
          Community Manager
          April 26, 2022

          Appreciate the feedback!

          A
          ah.photo
          Inspiring
          March 24, 2022

          @Jessica Nuñez I know I'm a bit late here, but I wanted to chime in and say I really appreciate this feature, and I can see some potential for this to expand too.

           

          As someone who usually makes 608 captions from scratch in Premiere (at least for shorter videos), which is definitely easier now thanks to Transcribe Sequence, I regularly run into the issue of lines getting clipped by a few characters more often than I can count, so this is a welcome feature for me.

           

          As for "what next?" I'd suggest to take this a step further, if possible, and provide a function (or at least a toggleable setting) where overflow CAN'T happen at all. If a word were to overflow, it automatically is put into the next line and that's reflected in the caption block editor (kind of like word processing software). In essence, more parity between the "text editor" and "captions presentation" parts.

           

          While the "Filter by captions with errors"toggle is going to help me identify these errors, it still won't prevent me from having to go through each troubled captions block and play the "line break game" (not a fun game mind you) where I:

          • Make a line break to fix the overflow
          • Go onto the new line and undo the pre-existing break
          • Check for any rogue spaces that got created while I was fussing with line breaks

           

           

           

           

          I do understand that professional captioners will be very particular about where they start a new line break, which is why I could also see this being a toggleable option and not mandatory, but I can't think of much reason to leave text in overflow and have it get cut-off or unseen. I think it would save a lot of time and just provide generally better ease of use if the text editor was able to dynamically treat the line breaks based on character limits.

           

          That said though, this is definitely a step in the right direction! Thanks!

            T
            Community Manager
            Trent HappelCommunity Manager
            Community Manager
            March 28, 2022

            Appreciate the feedback!

             

            Question: In the case where you choose Create captions from the Text panel > Transcribe tab, what if option to add a Line (due to charcater length) overrides the settings you chose? eg: You set Create captions to Single Line, but number of characters would make it necessary to create a second line? Would that be OK?

            A
            ah.photo
            Inspiring
            March 30, 2022

            Hi @Trent Happel,

             

            Thanks for taking the time to reply! I will apologize in advance for what is a bit lengthy (but hopefully thorough) response.

             

            I view the point you brought up (respecting the Single or Double Line choice during captions generation) as a seperate topic - even if it is still related to the world of captioning . I view that as topic pertaining to "generation", or more precisely: the process of converting a transcript into caption blocks in Premiere.

             

            As far as that is concerned: I actually think Premiere does quite well. Admittedly, the issue I mentioned (running into overflow) doesn't really happen much (if ever) in the actual generation process. The resulting caption blocks Premiere makes from transcripts do not seem to result in overflows to the best of my knowledge. To answer your question directly though: no, I don't think the line choice setting should be overruled - and that what the user chooses during "Create Captions" should take presedence. (Sorry if I'm not understanding your suggestion correctly though!)

             

            However, the discussion point Jessica brought up (and my resulting reply) pertains a bit more specifically to caption editing and fine-tuning... after the generation process is done. Whether the caption generation is done with Premiere, or via an external service where an SRT is imported, it's common to fine-tune captions or manually input provide additional information for best captioning practices (for example, adding speaker identification, music or sound effect cues, or just better arrange the text on the block to make it easier to read.)


            Here's an example with an image below: I've used a sequence transcript to create 2-Line 608 format captions, and as advertised, Premiere successfully creates multiple one and two-line captions blocks that do not overflow (Image #1)

             

            However, these two captions blocks aren't really great on their own, and there is enough space to be able to fit them into one captions block. No biggie - Premiere has a button for this! So I click the Merge Caption Blocks button. But per image #2, you can see that the resulting merge does not consider overflow limitations at all, and text is cutoff.

             

            Jessica's suggestion would help identify this as a problematic captions block, but I still need to find the correct spot to make a line-break (#3) and then eliminate a line to return it to 2-line captions (#4).

             

             

            This is why I suggested a global behavior for the captions text editor to automatically move a word down to a new line if that word were to overflow. The best analogy I can give is like word processing, where when you start typing and a word would be too big for a line, it pulls the whole word down to the next line.

             

            In fact, I can give a parallel directly within Premiere itself: When creating a defined-region text box with the text tool by clicking and dragging in the program panel, Premiere will use this behavior, and automatically move words to the next line if it would overflow the defined text box.

             

             

            I hope that all makes sense - and that others agree it would streamline the captioning editing process a bit by minimizing how much fiddling needs to be done with the text editor. Happy to hear other opinions though!

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