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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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oskxars,
Edits in the Text Panel apply to the entire caption segment. Edits in the Program Monitor apply only to the text you select. I think it is a bug, but that is the way it works.
Stan
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I think its a bug. Because once you select letter you want to subscript in caption box, and try to subscript it. Its subscripts all the the text.
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One thing that would be very helpful is an option to export a transcript in paragraph form that includes timecodes in the text. I would use this all the time.
A fix I would like to see is the 1 frame gaps between each caption. When I bring in an .srt that is set up to not have gaps between captions, Premiere Pro automatically adds the 1 frame gaps between every caption. It's really hard on the eyes and I've had clients complain about it. It's not easy to fix manually when the video is more than just a few minutes.
Otherwise, I'm loving the features. But these two are major issues for me.
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1. NEED ABILITY TO SEE MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF CAPTIONS AT ONCE. I want control of the eyeball aka "active track visibility". so if 2 people are talking at once I can caption it.
2. NEED ABILITY TO ADD EFFECTS TO CAPTIONED TEXT. EX: Presets, Red giant Universe, fades, turbulence, etc...
3. NUDGE ABILITY FOR MOVING CAPTIONS UP, DOWN, LEFT AND RIGHT. I have short cuts on number pad 8 = up, 4 = left, 6 = right, 2 = down. This D-pad NUDGE feature currently does NOT work with captions.
PLAUDITS - @IZHUNU
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First off, just want to say what a huge leap forward this workflow is... Being able to transcribe right in Premiere saves me a ton of time. Plus, I also really like having the captions act like clips in the timeline.
One thing I've noticed with converting the transcribed text to captions... As it breaks up sentences, it leaves trailing spaces at the end of lines. This doesn't seem to affect how the text is centered, but as in my case, when you have a rectangle around the text, this rectangle is extended by that extra space at the end, creating a rectangle that itself is no longer centered in the frame, and the text within it isn't centered anymore either.
So, the centering of the text seems to know not to count the trailing space, but the rectangle doesn't. Here's how the caption comes out automatically, and below it is how it comes out when I manually go through and delete the spaces at the end of every caption:
A super nitpicky detail, sure, but the fact that the text itself centers correctly tells me that someone thought of this happening so that the captions would always be perfectly centered, even if they ended in a space. Would it be somehow possible to make the same happen for the rectangle background?
Thanks!!
Nick
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I would love to see a option that lets Premiere detect and remove extraneous and trailing spaces from within Transcripts and Captions. These extra spaces have a tendency to bunch up while merging captions and fixing this manually can be tedious and cumbersome.
If I do want to do avoid having to do this manually, this is my current workaround.
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1. NEED ABILITY TO SEE/RENDER MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF CAPTIONS AT ONCE. I want control of the eyeball aka "active track visibility". so if 2 people are talking at once I can caption it.
2. NEED ABILITY TO ADD EFFECTS TO CAPTIONED TEXT. EX: Presets, Red giant Universe, fades, turbulence, etc...
3. NUDGE ABILITY FOR MOVING CAPTIONS UP, DOWN, LEFT AND RIGHT. I have short cuts on number pad 8 = up, 4 = left, 6 = right, 2 = down. This D-pad NUDGE feature currently does NOT work with captions.
PLAUDITS - @IZHUNU
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@Francis-Crossman Wanted to bring this issue to your attention....
Issue with multi-line captions with partially-transparent background fills:
When caption background fills are set to "per-line" mode, partially-transparent fills will overlap one another.
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@Francis-Crossman Please give users the flexibility to move caption objects beyond "title safe" areas.
I think Premiere's revamp of the captioning features are great, but it's lost some key design and placement flexibility in the process. Users are no longer able to handle a caption object as video object by changing position values in the Motion Effect Controls, which was an important workaround because you otherwise could caption objects beyond "title safe" areas.
There are many non-broadcast special use cases where precise positioning of stylized open captions are necessary. But Premiere's caption positioning doesn't allow placement beyond any of the title safe margins.
This is from the current 22.2.0 Beta (Build 35), but the limitation is present in the current release.
Also, I noticed the slider values continue to move, even as the caption object has stopped moving.
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Hey buddy, you and me both!
I've been requesting this since the start - incredibly frustrating.
I have an open case with Adobe about it which is not leading anywhere & no official response to my post either:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/captions-limitations/m-p/12510610
Hope you get more joy, I'll follow your post to keep up to date with updates.
Best wishes,
Matty
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Adobe sticks to standards, and there are standards for captioning. Premiere Pro will not let you create non-standard captions. Should it? I don't think so. If you're creating something that doesn's stick to caption standards, it's no longer a caption. The new Captions-to-Graphics feature is a better way - or will be, when it's been tweaked a bit more.
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For some reason, animation presets that are anchored to "Anchor to Out Point" do not work for the upgraded Captions to Graphics. This is extremely annoying for those who want to animate the captions to pop in and pop out in large sections.
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You need to be able to import raw txt files into Premiere, and then have Premiere slice and dice and set the time codes. This is necessary for everyone who works with a teleprompter, where the text that is used is already in digital form. Using the auto-transcription process is very labor intensive since there are so many mistakes that then have to be corrected manually. If the original text file was used, there would be no mistakes at all, and the transcription process would be very quick and easy.
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I've been missing htis feature too. It would also be great for Voice-Overs, where the script already exists.
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Regarding importing raw text files, adding timecodes, etc.
Other Beta discussions have more information on changes being made. You can now export a transcript and reimport a corrected one. I think this makes it possible to format your raw text so it can be imported. Not ready for prime time. (And I think the assemble rough cuts is broken in the latest builds.)
See these threads:
Stan
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I use Transcriptive for this task which free aligns bepake text to speech. You have to play to get acceptable results... can chop sentences at non
-rational positions!
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The new caption editing tools are great, but I'd find my workflow would be twice as fast if, when you split the caption track and create a duplicate caption entry, the edit that you make to one is reflected in the duplicate.
For instance, the transcription generates 4 lines of text in a 40 second block of video. That's too much; it obscures for example, a powerpoint slide. The lecturer has left a bar on the bottom of their slides that can be overlaid with a line of text / caption. So you do a cut in the caption track at the point the audio track reaches the end of the line. You now have two identical 4 line blocks of text in the caption list. This is OK. You go in and delete the end of block 1, then you have to go in and delete the start of block 2. When you have a duplicated block like this, you should be able to drag over the text to delete from caption 1 and simultaneously highlight the text you're NOT highlighting in the duplicated text. A single press of the delete key would then delete the text you don't want from block 1 AND the text that's remaining in block 1 from block 2. This could be done by holding down a modifier key, say, or having a preference settable.
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I cannot find a new feature request nor the old UserVoice-originated feature request, so I created a new one:
Stan
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Thanks. New to the community forum - this timewasting was just bugging me so much that I had to add to this thread not knowing if it was the best way to get a Feature Request open.
I've been asked to upload a lecture/science forum to YouTube, but to make sure that we're GDPR complaint and that the Closed Captioning is available and correct because we are really, really focussed on Disability Access. I'm already a week overdue on getting this uploaded, and the end is nowhere near in sight yet!
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GW68, Welcome to the forum! Never an issue; a moderator will move things when necessary. Just post away!
Stan