DISCUSS: New Captions Workflow in Premiere Pro

Report · Oct 20, 2020

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

The Premiere Pro beta is now version 15 (starting January 26, 2021)
The captions workflow in on by default - no need to enable it
The beta menu has been removed (because you don't need it anymore - the advanced beta features are always on)
Applications for speech to text early access has closed and those who have been accepted should have recieved an email. The email you used to apply needs to match the email (Adobe ID) you use to log into creative cloud. If you did not recieve an email stating that you have been accepted, or if you are logged into creative cloud using a different email you will contininue to see the message stating that speech to text is coming soon.
Broadcast closed captions are now supported CEA 608/708, OP47, Teletext, EBU Subtitles.
Exporting is working (burned-in, sidecar, embedded) and queue to Media Encoder is working too now.

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

Just like any beta software, we do not recommend using this for mission critical projects since features are likely to change over time.
The Premiere Pro beta has been updated to the next major version – 15. This means your projects will NOT be backwards compatible with the current shipping version of Premiere Pro – 14.x. All projects created in Premiere Pro Beta, even if you don’t use captions, will be saved as version 15.
Opening existing projects in Premiere Pro Beta will ask you to save a copy of your project in the new project version. Take extra care with Team Projects since you do not get a version update warning and you can mess up the project for your entire team!
If you have existing captions in a project that gets upgraded, we will convert from the old style captions to the new style. We will do our best to match the styling, but do not guarantee a pixel-perfect transition.

So, if you’re good with all that, read on . . .

Enabling the Feature:

Update to the latest Beta version - you're done. It's on by default now

Quickstart Guide:

Download this sample project to follow along PR New Captions Workflow quickstart.zip

Open the sequence The climber - start here and familiarize yourself with the spoken dialog.
Open the Text panel from the window menu and make sure it’s showing the Captions tab.
Locate the SRT file in the project panel The Climber - subtitles.srt
Drag the SRT file into the sequence and drop it anywhere.
A new caption track is created, and all the caption items are placed at the correct time.
Place the playhead over one of the caption items to select it. This should activate the Essential Graphics panel into editing mode.
Change the Style in the Essential Graphics panel by choosing a different preset from the Style dropdown.
Notice the font, size, color, and background have been updated.
Play the sequence and watch the captions follow along in the Text panel.

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

Text panel – open from the Window Menu
Transcript tab – This is where you can create automatic speech to text transcriptions, navigate the transcript, and create automatic captions. This is only available to those who been accepted into the eary access program for speech to text. All others will continue to see the "coming soon" graphics.
Captions tab – Navigate and edit caption text.
Search – find characters, words and phrases in your captions.
Next / Previous search result – use to navigate search results.
Replace / Replace All – used to replace search results with new text.
Add Caption – this will place a blank caption at the playhead in the current sequence
Caption number – a sequence number to count your captions
Timecode – TC start and stop of the current caption item. This is not editable. To change the timing of the caption, edit it in the sequence.
Caption text – the text of the caption itself. Double click to edit.

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.

Add a captions track - option/alt + command/ctrl + A
Add a new caption segment at the playhead- option/alt + command/ctrl + C
Go to next caption segment in the timeline - option/alt + command/ctrl + UP
Go to next caption segment in the timeline - option/alt + command/ctrl + down

Captions tracks

Caption track setting – the CC button

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.

Hide all caption tracks
Show all caption tracks
Show active caption track only

Active Track/Visibility – the eyeball icon

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.

Label

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)

Right-click the caption track header

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 area

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.

Track Lock

Lock the track to prevent editing. This functions the same as A/V tracks.

Track Targeting

The Caption track header has a ‘Toggle the track targeting for this track’ button with same functionality as A/V tracks.

Sync Lock

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.

Select (one or many) You can select multiple Caption track items by Shift-selecting each item or marquee/lasso select items or use Select All (which will also include other items in tracks like video, audio, etc.)
Trim
Ripple Trim
Razor/Add Edit: You can add an edit/razor a Caption item as you would with any Timeline item and Track Targeting is supported. The difference is that when you razor a Caption item, both items will have the same text which you can then modify in the Text panel
Copy/Paste: paste of Caption item(s) follows Track targeting which allows you to copy and paste captions items between tracks.

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

Create Master Text Styles for consistent styling across the entire captions track. A style saves all the settings made in the Essential Graphics panels, including font, alignment, color and more. Setting a Master Text Style to one caption applies it to all captions on the track. You can have different styles for different tracks.
Sync from Master Style and Push to Master Style: When changing the look of a caption you may want to push this change to the entire track for consistency, that’s were Push to Master Style comes into play. Or you might want to revert an edit to a caption back to the Master Style. Then use Sync from Master Style.

Text

Font: Set font, font style and font size.
Paragraph Alignment: For horizontal alignment use Left align text, Center align text, Right align text and Justify. We have now also added Vertical alignment with Top align text, Center text vertically and Bottom align text. This defines how a caption grows when adding additional lines. As an example, there is a good chance you will want a caption to be bottom aligned, this way a single line caption and the second line of a two-line caption will always be in the same vertical position.
Tracking: Loose or tighten the space between characters.
Leading: Loose or tighten the vertical space between lines.
Faux Styles: Bold, Italic, All Caps, Small Caps, Superscript, Subscript, Underline.

Align and Transform

Position captions with zones: You can choose from different zones to position your caption in different areas on screen, e.g. bottom center.
Fine tune position: Through Set Horizontal and Set Vertical Position you can add an offset to your zone setting.
Change the text box size: If you want to shrink or expand the text box size you can do this through Set Horizontal Scale and Set Vertical Scale. This will affect text wrapping and paragraph align settings.

Appearance

Fill: Change the color of your captions.
Stroke: Add single or multiple strokes. The Graphics Properties menu under the wrench menu gives you more control over stroke styling.
Background: Add a background box. You can choose the color, add additional padding and change the opacity.
Shadow: You can add a shadow and fine tune with controls such as opacity, angle, distance and more.

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

Text Panel > Transcript tab
Only available for those who have applied and been accepted to the speech to text early access program. Other will not have access to this feature.

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.

Import the SRT file into your Premiere Pro project just like any piece of media
Drag the SRT from the project panel into your sequence and let go anywhere
A new caption track is automatically created, and the captions are placed on the track

Do it by hand

For short sequences, doing it by hand may not too much trouble.

Open Text panel from the Window menu
Go to the Captions tab of the Text Panel
Press the “Add Captions Track” button – a new captions track is added to your current sequence
Place the playhead at the beginning of your first piece of dialog (hint – use the waveforms in the audio to help align)
Press the “+” button near the top of the Captions tab of the Text Panel to add a blank caption
Double click on <Type your caption here> to go into edit mode
Type out the caption text
Trim the end of the caption in the timeline to align with the end of the spoken dialog
Repeat for each caption you wish to add
See the other sections on Working with captions in the Sequence and Styling with the Essential Graphics panel for more details on editing and styling.

Exporting your sequence with captions

There are three options for exporting captions: burned in, sidecar file, or embedded into the video file.

Make sure the caption track you want exported is visible by toggling the eyeball on (Toggle Active Captions Track).
Choose File > Export
Open the Captions tab in the export settings and choose burn in, sidecar or embedded
Burned in and sidecar are supported with any encoding preset
Embedded is limited to pro codecs like MXF OP1a, DNX, and Prores and requires that the caption track format be set to one of the broadcast standards like CEA-608
Click Export
Sidecar files will be saved next to the video file with the same name
Queueing to Media encoder is supported too

Happy captioning! Once again, we welcome your feedback. Please leave comments below.

Report · Mar 12, 2021

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 >_<

Report · Mar 12, 2021

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.

Report · Mar 12, 2021

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?

Report · Mar 13, 2021

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…

Report · Mar 14, 2021

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…

Report · Mar 15, 2021

Hi,

Is it possible to export the trackstyle in the new captions workflow so I can use the style in another project?

Thanks:-)

Carsten

Report · Mar 15, 2021

See this post:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/premiere-pro-15-edit-rename-delete-captions-master-style...

Needs to be added to the reference guide.

Stan

Report · Mar 15, 2021

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:-)

Report · Mar 15, 2021

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

Report · Mar 15, 2021

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

Report · Mar 15, 2021

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

Report · Mar 15, 2021

Are you sure you're dragging the panel name, and not the window? Hard to tell on my phone.

Report · Mar 15, 2021

You might be right:-)

Report · Mar 15, 2021

Yep; that was it. Once undocked, it is very tempting to drag the window header and not the panel name!

Stan

Report · Mar 16, 2021

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

Report · Mar 16, 2021

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.

Report · Mar 16, 2021

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.

Report · Mar 16, 2021

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

Report · Mar 17, 2021

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.

Report · Mar 17, 2021

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.

Report · Jul 03, 2021

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.

Report · Mar 18, 2021

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE: add mpeg caption embeding I have two stations that require 608/708 embedded mpeg, not sidecard!!!

Report · Mar 20, 2021

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.

Report · Mar 20, 2021

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:

Report · Mar 20, 2021

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!?