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UPDATE: January 29, 2021
Since the innitial post back in October of last year we have made a ton of progress and some of the details originally posted here are no longer acurate. I have updated the post to be more accurate to the state of things today.
Here are some important changes to be aware of
Thanks to everyone for testing and for all your awesome feedback! - Francis
The captioning workflow in Premiere Pro is getting a complete makeover and you can be the first to try it out! We have a new text panel for editing and viewing your captions as text. Captions now have their own track on the timeline so they can be edited just like video. Styling uses the power of the Essential Graphics panel so you can make fantastic looking captions.
Best of all – we will be adding speech to text and auto captions powered by Adobe Sensei – coming later.
Some important things to know before you start testing this feature
So, if you’re good with all that, read on . . .
Enabling the Feature:
Quickstart Guide:
Download this sample project to follow along PR New Captions Workflow quickstart.zip
Play around with visual styles in the Essential Graphics panel and try editing the text in the Text panel. Read on for more detailed info on the various pieces of the workflow.
The Text Panel
Open the Text panel from the Window menu. This is where you interact with text and it has two tabs – Transcript and Captions
The Caption track - working with captions in the Sequence
We have completely reimagined the way captions work in Premiere Pro. If you have used captions previously in Premiere Pro, this is totally different – much better we think. Please tell us what YOU think by leaving a public comment below.
Create and delete caption tracks
There are a few ways to create a new caption track. You can drag an SRT file onto the Sequence or use the “Create new captions track” button in the Captions tab of the Text panel. To delete a caption track, right-click on the caption track header and choose “delete track”
Drag an SRT file on the sequence
Dragging an SRT caption file onto the Sequence will automatically create a new caption track at the top of the Timeline.
Keyboard Shortcuts
To see all the keyboard shortcuts available for captions, open the keyboard shortcuts menu from the Premiere Pro menu and search for "caption". Here are some notable ones. There are many other which do not have default assignments.
Captions tracks
This can hide the caption track area or solo just the active caption track if you have more than one. It is useful if you want to declutter your timeline. It does not turn off the active caption track from rendering in the program monitor, however.
This will enable/disable Program Monitor viewing of the Caption track selected. Only one Caption track can be active at a time, so when you make one track active, the other tracks will automatically be disabled. You can also choose to disable all Caption tracks. Inactive Caption tracks will dim making it easier to note your active Caption track.
By default, this will show the caption track format (eg Subtitles, CEA-708, CEA-608, etc.) You can right-click the Caption track header and choose Rename to choose a custom name (same functionality as A/V tracks)
Additional caption tracks can be added by right-clicking in the caption track header – choose “Add Track”. You can also delete or rename a caption track in the same way.
Caption tracks will always be at the top of the sequence. Additional caption tracks are added on top. This will continue until you have reached 25% of the Timeline vertical space, then the tracks will stop “growing” and scroll bars will appear to the right. Caption tracks will never take up more than 25% of the upper space of the Timeline. This is dynamic, so if you increase or decrease the Timeline panel height, the 25% will adjust accordingly.
Lock the track to prevent editing. This functions the same as A/V tracks.
The Caption track header has a ‘Toggle the track targeting for this track’ button with same functionality as A/V tracks.
The Caption track header has a ‘Toggle Sync Lock’ button with same functionality as A/V tracks.
Editing timing of caption items on the track
You can use all the familiar editing tools that you are used just like editing video and audio.
Styling with the Essential Graphics panel
Open the Essential Graphics panel from the Window menu. This is where you choose things like font, size, color and position. Make sure you have at least one caption selected. This will activate the Edit tab of the Essential Graphics panel. If you have created and stylized text in Premiere Pro before, the following should be very familiar to you. However, for captions we are adding small enhancements such as zones, and vertical text alignment.
Styles
Text
Align and Transform
Appearance
Transcribing the dialog into captions
You have three options for transcribing your audio and creating captions: speech to text, use a third-party service, or do it by hand.
Speech to text
Use a third-party service
If you already have a workflow that uses a third party transcription service, you can bring in that file. SRT is the best option.
Do it by hand
For short sequences, doing it by hand may not too much trouble.
Exporting your sequence with captions
There are three options for exporting captions: burned in, sidecar file, or embedded into the video file.
Happy captioning! Once again, we welcome your feedback. Please leave comments below.
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So I am experiencing an issue where I export the video file with embedded captions, they're all in the correct place in the time line. Even double-checking the captions time code in the captions tab, but when I drag the final exported video file back into Premiere just to QC, I see all captions out of place and at the start of the video file. Am I missing a setting to lock it in place prior to exporting?
A second export resulted in the captions running too early, starting the captions about 2 seconds early, mind you I haven't touched anything within the timeline/sequence.
This is just frustrating. I didn't have these issues in the prior version, but now I can't go backwards in the project >_<
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Did a few more test exports, so I also noticed teh spacing between all captions are gone. Everything is just scrunched together, so the captions are over before the video file even finishes.
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I would like to point out an unexpected bonus. Recently I had cut a 2-hour interview firstly down to 40 minutes, and then to a 90-second' highlight promotion.
Having a full script helped, as I could see what to edit. By clicking on the sentences I was able t go to that position in the timeline and do the cuts, so, much easier, any small differences were easily solved.
Is this the most important tool to be added to Adobe yet?
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I caught a nice translation mistake in transcript mode :
in transcript mode, while assinging "speakers" (people who speak), it was translated in french as "les hauts-parleurs" which is "hifi-speakers" 🙂 It's cute, but should be:
Modifier les intervenants…
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I'm still wondering about the necessity of the transcript panel vs subtitles/captions only panel… I also wonder where it would be best to do the edit, if the team has some recommendations :
- in small bits at the caption level
- or in large(r) amounts at the transcript level.
There might be "more" in transcript, like translation of the sentences, which would explain the two panels I guess…
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Hi,
Is it possible to export the trackstyle in the new captions workflow so I can use the style in another project?
Thanks:-)
Carsten
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See this post:
Needs to be added to the reference guide.
Stan
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Thanks:-) The workflow is a little bit strange, but I can manage. Would be nice to be able to add to the Essentail Graphics panel - or add to the libraries. And to edit the styles. And it would be vere nice to be able to dock the new text panel somewhere like other panels instead of opening the caption-panel. Hopefully it will come:-)
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It is dockable. And you can pick the Captions workspace (tab at top with the workspaces) or just open the Text Panel in any workspace from the Window menu.
Stan
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Hi again,
And thanks:-)
I know, that I can open the workspace, but I can't get it to dock - as You can see here:
https://youtu.be/jgAw95OSGDk
I have found a couple of further problems: Editing the text, on a pc You usually delete backwards using the Back-button and forwards using the Del-button. Here both buttons delete backwards.
Before You had the caption as a file in the Project Panal, thus being able to copy, rename and drag into another sequence. It would be nice to have that function back.
Carsten
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Interesting. When I go to the Editing workspace, open the Text Panel, it is docked, and can be moved.
BUT if I undock it, it is no longer dockable. If I reset saved layout, it returns to docked.
But the first time I tried that, it would still not dock.
The Del/Back button issue, according to the report of one user, will be fixed in 15.1. I have not seen a staff report confirming that.
Stan
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Are you sure you're dragging the panel name, and not the window? Hard to tell on my phone.
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You might be right:-)
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Yep; that was it. Once undocked, it is very tempting to drag the window header and not the panel name!
Stan
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Hi
First off..loving the new captioning. Best transcription so far - Wrap salute Lee = Absolutely 🤣🤣
A couple of quick questions.
1. Is there/could there be a way of changing the dictionary within the transcribing function from American English to English English. e.g. Liter - Litre Aging - Ageing etc etc
2. When transcribe recognises two speakers, is there a simple way when creating captions to format them separately? So there's an automatic way to assign different colours to different speakers?
Thanks
Neil
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Off the bat I personaly wanted to say THANK YOU so much to all the hard work at Adobe for updating this finally. Its AWESOME now!!!!!
Only question concern I and my fellow colleagues have is will / can there be a way for
two line subs like this one to have the background land exactly on the size of each line like the previous subs title sytem did? I think this is the standard way with two line subs are displayed so we really hope so.
So for example the background would be exactly behind "NARRATOR" and "with" on top line. Right now it is using the bottom line as a guide so you get all that extra background over the empty areas. Not ideal or pleasent looking.
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Overall, I’m really impressed and grateful to have been accepted to early access. I was able to get a way better transcript and faster edit than with third party extensions I’ve used recently. I wonder how much it will cost to transcribe once it’s publicly available or if it will be rolled into the subscription cost?
Here’s my reaction the first time I used it:
I imported a finished 3-minute documentary trailer as my first test of speech to text. I dropped it on the timeline, opened the text window, and clicked generate subtitles. So easy!
- Impressed with quality of generated text, including removing “um” and duplicate filler words.
- Didn’t transcribe a few lines but it might have done better if I had my tracks split out and the dialogue labeled.
- Didn’t do a great job identifying speakers, but that was easy to change.
- Editing the text was pretty easy.
- I’d like some shortcuts for moving between text fields in the edit mode.
- Also not intuitive that I can’t scroll down in the text field in edit mode - I had to use the up/down arrow keys.
Then, I could not for the life of me figure out how to generate captions from this text. I spent like half an hour googling around, restarting Premiere Beta, checking my settings, all for nothing. Turns out the panel window was not expanded enough to show that button! This is a major flaw for first-time users.
Another issue that occurred when I couldn’t figure out how to generate captions from my text: When I created a new caption track from the caption panel menu (before I had any text in there), I couldn’t tell where the track was. I made sure the CC menu had “show all captions” ticked. I tend to ignore the settings in the upper left of my timeline unless snapping gets turned off, so at first I thought the thing that said “subtitle” was part of that. It wasn’t clear it was a new track until I generated a second one.
Once I found the create captions button in the text panel, it was pretty smooth sailing. The way the captions worked on the timeline made sense to me and was easy to adjust the timing. The only thing was I kept wasting time with how much you have to click to get into edit mode on the caption panel, especially when you “add a new caption after”. That should always default to edit mode on the newly created caption. It was confusing that the new captions or text I added to an existing caption showed up in the video as a different font and style. Luckily, I was planning to adjust all the captions and looked up how to create a master style, which made it easy to apply to all the captions on the track. (Also, I wish you could move the line between the caption and the video track on the timeline like you can between video and audio tracks.)
The merge caption feature worked well when I selected the captions in the panel, though I kind of wish it would default to merging the second one onto a new line, but maybe that’s just me. I did run into a bug when I selected two captions on the timeline and those same captions became selected in the caption panel. However, when I chose “merge,” it merged the top selected caption with the unselected caption above it.
I like that the workflow is to transcribe sequences because that makes sense for how I work. Does the transcript stay with the sequence? What happens if I pull a clip from that sequence and drop it in a new one?
Can the edited captions update the transcript if you choose? I made a workflow of editing the transcript first, but it’s easier to edit the wording once you’ve got the captions in. That can lead to a second round of edits once you make your captions track. I agree with another commenter that having the choice to export the captions from the sequence as text or srt would be very helpful!
Updated feedback after second use:
- Love how you can choose in-out points for the transcript and merge it with the existing transcript. This made it really easy to make subtitles for only certain sections of a video.
- Love that when editing the transcript if you click on a word and then click “split” it will make a new caption starting there.
- Issues with responsiveness in clicking to edit. Either doesn’t respond in transcript mode after I’ve finished editing a section and try to click on another one. Or when in caption mode it will skip to another caption entirely and won’t let me click to edit a certain caption.
- Also had the text panel just go blank and had to quit and restart.
- Sometimes automatic transcription isn’t great at distinguishing two voices which are distinct from each other when they talk one after the other.
- Another buggy thing: adding a new caption segment deletes the one I have highlighted??
- Sometimes “split segment” just isn’t available to click when I am editing in the transcript panel. Not sure why.
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We need to Export Transcript with Timecode into a text file. Curently the export transcript function export without timecode which is not useful for us. The producer needs to see the timecode of where the line is happening. The other export option .prtranscript seems to be an adobe specific file which would be fine if acrobat could read it but it doesn't .
Thank you
Craig
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Thank you for updating this tool - A much better worklflow.
One small detail that could make manual subtitle adding quicker, would be the ability to reverse the order in the text window. Meaning the last subtitle being on top always. At the moment when adding new subtitle block half the times it shows the new active row (while still needing to double click to paste the text), but half of the time it remains on top and I have to scroll down and double click to activate then paste the text.
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I'm having a very difficult time with the new Align and Transform settings.
The standard settings don't offer as much control over positioning as the previous version did, and as a result my captions aren't fitting in the pre-created box they're supposed to appear in.
For example, a one-line caption can be perfectly centered where I want it to be, but two-line captions hardly budge when I adjust the Y-axis settings.
Previously, I would have them aligned with the Center box, then I would go into the Effects tab and manually adjust the Y-Axis from there. I can no longer do that and my frustration is exponentially rising as I'm trying to prepare a video for immediate release.
Love the fact that we can easily attribute a style to the captions, but it doesn't do me much good if I can't get the style to be how I need it to be.
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Having exactly the same problem.
Surely an easy fix is the ability to right click on the captions track and convert to a video layer where we can use the effects panel to position.
If you are running windows then try this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWRLDcrOhIA
I'm on a mac so am going to try test out with an emulator.
If these guys can do it, I'm sure Papa Adobe can do this too in a future update. I HOPE.
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PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE: add mpeg caption embeding I have two stations that require 608/708 embedded mpeg, not sidecard!!!
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Forgive the expletive but why tf can't I lock all tracks and keep the captions unlocked, then use the shortcut to "Select Clip at Playhead" (LIKE LITERALLY EVERY OTHER OBJECT IN PRMIERE) to manipulate captions!? You have ALMOST made this useful. Instead I am stuck on the f'ing mouse and have to move around the timeline like a 5 year old opening Premiere for the first time. WTH. Infuriating. I swear I'm going to switch to Resolve this year.
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OR, why I can't use the shortcuts for SELECT NEAREST EDIT POINT AS....
If you're going to make captions function like text layers, MAKE THEM FUNCTION LIKE TEXT LAYERS AND RESPECT ALL THE OTHER WAYS OF MANIPULATING STUFF IN THE TIMELINE — oy vey. 🤦:male_sign:
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Bind a shortcut to "edit caption" great. I hit it. And then I try and just start typing... using regular keyboard shortcuts like "jump to next word" or whatever, and then all of a sudden the playhead is bouncing around everywhere. Jesus. I have to again, grab the mouse and then go double-click on the text layer in order to edit it... WHAT'S THE POINT OF THE SHORTCUT!?