Can't add background color to subtitles or captions

[CJYYZ]

I've watched several tutorial videos on how to add a background color to closed captions or subtitles. basically you select the subtitle/caption and the essential graphics panel populates with styling options. The problem is, my essential graphics panel is blank when I select captions or subtitles (see attached photo comparing tutorial on top, my Premiere Pro on bottom). No options for font choice, color, background color... Nada. I need to add a background color to closed captions. Any suggestions? I'm using Premiere Pro 2022 on a MacBook Pro on Catalina.

[Stan Jones]

CJYYZ,

Yes, that is strange. I would try selecting just one caption to see if the EGP Edit populates. but it should work with all of them selected.

Restart PR. Assuming you have already done that, go to Workspace and "Reset to saved layout."

Close that project, create a new test project, add a few captions, and test.

If none of that helps, reset preferences.

Stan

[Paul28125186k85q]

The reason is simple. You've imported as a 708 caption track (I believe from the name of the track in the screenshot). They are embedded in the video and the decoder on an STB, TV or similar will decide the look of the text at the endpoint. The look is described in the 708 guidelines.

You can right click on the caption track and select "Track settings..." and change to something else, I've never had the chance to play with 708, but I've tested that with dfxp, srt, EBU-STL to set them to 708 or 608, because there are some frustrating things happening to the dfxp import, which is another story.

[Paul28125186k85q]

In this video Adobe Care mention the fact that you're limited depending on the track type.

[Stan Jones]

Paul,

You are correct that 608/708 caption types limit your style options. And that users may be able to override them.

However, they both allow setting important elements, and this includes background opacity and color. Transparent is essentially off, or you can pick Semi-Transparent (called Translucent in 708) or Opaque to show a background color. 608 has 8 color choices; 708 has 22.

The problem here is that even though the captions are selected in the timeline, the Edit tab in the EGP shows nothing at all.

Stan

[Paul28125186k85q]

Yeah, I saw that in my PP now later, I'm testing a bunch of different formats.

However, I did experience the same, and starting a new project and testing there solved my issue. I was panicking as that happened just after an update and I wondered if Adobe had taken away features.

[Stan Jones]

Paul,

Caption formats are amazingly complex, and I've gotten confused more than once when I did not notice I had gotten back into a test with a different format!

I see your feature requests; very interesting stuff that gets to some extremely important problems - sidecar formats and track styles overwriting custom edits. I need to study them further!

Stan

[jstrawn · Accepted solution]

In the lower half of that image, I can see that you have several caption segments and a video track item selected at the same time. The Essential Graphics Panel cannot be used to change anything about regular video clips, so it's just showing the blank panel there. See see all EGP controls for captions, select one or more caption segments... and nothing else.

[Stan Jones]

Ha! @jstrawn, I can't believe I missed that. I was focused on knowing that it was okay that multiple caption segments were selected, I forgot about the effect of adding a video clip.

Thanks!

Stan

[jstrawn]

@Stan Jones It's easy to miss those kinds of things. The EGP will show different things depending on what is selected in the Timeline. For example, the selection of one or more Layer will show quite different controls than the selection of one or more Graphics (but no Layers). The same is true of Caption Segments. But the only way you will see a totally blank EGP Edit tab is when you either have regular media selected (like an mp4 clip) or a mixture of things that cannot be edited together, like a caption segment and a Graphic track item.

[CJYYZ]

Aha! Thanks @jstrawn! I was selecting a single caption segment and hitting Cmd+A to select all the caption segments on the track, forgetting that it selects everything. Is there a way to select everything on a captions track other than clicking and dragging?

[jstrawn]

@CJYYZ Use the Track Select Forward Tool (A) which is right under the arrow tool in the toolbar. Better yet, create a Track Style using the Essential Graphics Panel and you can ripple any appearance changes to the whole Caption track with one push of a button.

[Paul28125186k85q]

Track styles will overwrite bold, italics and similar, as well as left, right and center text, so be careful when applying and creating styles.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-ideas/let-us-do-granular-style-saves/idi-p/13539062

[Stan Jones]

Another method is to select one caption in the Text panel -> Caption tab, and then use Ctrl+A.

Stan