Closed Captions Not Working (Premiere Pro 14.9 and earlier)

[JessT]

I am trying to create a closed caption in premiere pro cc (trial version) but when I am in the captions tab, am unable to select the 'add' caption button. I have enabled the captions and have watched many video tutorials and searched the web for answers but there is nothing about why the 'add' caption option might not be available?

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Message was edited by: Jim Simon

[jmorris500]

Sorry to hear that. Very disappointed but this has been the issue with Adobe for YEARS! This is what keeps people away, I know this is why I stayed away for so long and kept using Avid. Although Premiere is feature rich, it makes no difference if those features do not work as intended.

I just proved that the BUG is in fact a BUG above. This is not how any other caption program reacts, this is not because of over lapping captions, it just decides intermittently when it doesn't want to display a caption.

There is a BUGGY work around just leave the dead caption there and add another caption right after it and the text will show. It is a pain but it works. This is most certainly something Adobe can and will eventually fix. They just tend to play a certain card until they figure it out.

I am sure they have their work cut out for them this is complicated stuff but to pretend that the issue doesn't exsist is crazy, which is the bugger issue, a disservice to their customers. We are just looking for some transparency and honesty Adobe, admit there is an issue and let us know if it is being worked on and a reasonable time frame so we can seek other options in the mean time.

[jmorris500]

A few other bugs I have noticed when attempting to use the closed caption function.

1. Intermittently when you click the timecode of a caption and slide left or right to adjust the code the mouse cursor disappears, only inside premiere move your mouse around outside the premiere window and mouse is back, items will still high light inside premiere but the cursor is gone, the only way to get it back is to close premiere and re-open.

2. In the timeline window you cannot adjust the or manipulate the caption handle bars to adjust the timecode start and end times.

[monstremoi]

I'm sorry closed captioning is not working for you. I know if the caption file framerate does not match the frame rate of the Sequence and the Source clip, we can get into problems with displaying captions, or some captions will not display due to framerate mismatch. This is one thing you can check for. Making sure the frame rates of the closed captioning file matching the Source and Sequence framerate.

[jmorris500]

They are the same frame rate.

Sent from my iPhone

[monstremoi]

When you export the native CC 708 S1 as a MCC or XML sidecar file and reimport it, do you have the problem of missing captions / not apprearing captions with the imported MCC or XML sidecar?

[jmorris500]

Havnt tried that. I did try importing a scc file but premier wouldn't import it.

Sent from my iPhone

[monstremoi]

The 708 closed caption data will not go into the SCC sidecar format -- SCC is 608 exclusive. Try MCC or XML with your 708 data. Let me know how it goes. Thanks for the posts.

[jmorris500]

Agh thanks! Good to know. I will try that in a bit and report back. Is there somewhere that explains all that? Is it in the help file?

Sent from my iPhone

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi jmorris500,

Check this out: http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/closed-captioning.html#Supported%20caption%20formats

Thanks,
Kevin

[WillGets]

My closed captions are just not showing in the exported movie. I can see them in Premiere CC. But nothing in the exported media file. EVEN if I embed them in a .mov, the captions are not showing (and yes, I did click on the View -> Show Closed Captioning. Nothing works.No matter what format of movie I choose and settings for closed captioning in all these formats.

[KevinAGI]

I will admit I find that the CC in Premiere Pro are  far from perfect, but if you observe the rules they do work correctly. Now I have a few years of experience handling closed captions for DVD, and creating test QC  streams for closed caption decoders. First you can not have a caption start and end on the same frame. It is always good to have at least 1 frame of space between them. Second QT only decodes 608 captions so you can not see the 708 captions decoded caption in QT. In HD Programing both 608 and 708 captions must be present.

Now I have successfully created file that pass QC for major broadcasters out of Premiere CC, but there was a work around. I will not detail everything, but it went like this.

Create 608 captions respecting all of the rules needed for closed captions.

Export an xml sidecar file of these captions

edit the header of the xml file telling it it is a 708 file (Not as simple as the explanation)

import the new 708 xml file.

Put the file on the timeline with the 608 file

Readjust the position of the text. 708 has a different number of characters that it bases it's position on.

Export an mxf file.

To test I simply reimport the mxf file and check that the captions come in correctly.

Send it off for broadcast.

Remember 608 captions were created to run at 29.97fps, and they were represented by little dots at the top of the screen you could not see on the TV. They can only stream so many dots per second so there are rules for how you do captions based on this limitation. That why captioning software is so specific for something that seems so easy. Some standards testing routine should be added to assure compliance, like the caption editor having a red line around it to say "Hey you cant do that"

Kevin

[KB8WFH]

CC won't ever show up embedded in a file. That was a disappointing thing to find out for me. I was hoping to use it to subtitle a foreign film I am working on. True CC'ing isn't meant to be subtitles. It has industry/broadcast standards that allow you to export what is called a "side car" file with the CC info (text and time markers) or a file where the CC is embedded in the video as data, but it does not show up unless you have a capable of turning the CC on. It won't show up by default in a video.

[KB8WFH]

I can only say I have found several bugs. There have been times when I have a CC overlay on a video and it will show partial text, start backtracking over it before it runs out, way before any other element should be shown. Then when I delete the entire CC overlay, sometimes a few letters of the text show up in video window still, even though its completely removed from the timeline. Other bugs persist as well. It's definitely a Premiere issue and now the way CC is supposed to work.

If this is the way CC works with all these eccentricities, no one would ever be able to viably use it.

[KevinAGI]

KB8WFH,

Are you using windows or a mac out of curiosity? Also Are you using CUDA? I have been doing some testing from home today on my laptop as well as remoting in to my editsuite. My edit suite is an old mac with an ATI card thus no CUDA, and my laptop is a barnd new windows 8 machine with dual Nvidia 750 cards. I have noticed some really weird behavior on my laptop I don't see at work. I solved most of it by updating my cuda drivers, but I am not sure it is all solved.

Kevin

[WillGets]

Hello Kevin. Thank you for your reply, but I am not understanding much of it.

• I exported the movie as Quicktime, captions separate and as xml.
• I open the xml in a text editor. I am not sure what part is the header. But I see 608 several times in the content. So I change all to 708 and resave.
• Importing the new xml file back into premiere does not put the xml anywhere on the time line. A little box pops up saying it is importing  and then disappears. I don't see anything happen.
• So I go to media browser and try to drag and drop the xml file to timeline while wondering what you mean by "Put the file on the timeline with the 608 file". Do you mean on top of it on the same line/channel? As in overlapping it? Next to it? In the channel above it? What do you mean?
• But I see that no channels/lines are letting me drop an xml file onto them

Stumped.

By thew way, I can import the .scc file into Youtube and it works just fine.

But I need these close captiones to appear in a movie that I load to my own website.

That is why I thought embedded closed captioning in a .mov would be good. I was surprised when they did not show up. I look into it and see I must switch on View Closed Captioning in the .mov movie player. But STILL no captioning shows up.

How the heck does one have a video, with closed captioning, on your own website?

[KevinAGI]

But I need these close captiones to appear in a movie that I load to my own website.

That statement says it all. You are trying to provide subtitles for web video. Each player has a different method for playing subtitles or captions on the web.

As you said when you load the scc file into youtube it works fine, just not on your website. What palyer are you using on your website?  Why not take the easy route and embed the video from youtube, or vimeo on your website. This is what I do and it works like a charm.

Now as to the whole 708 vs 608 thing you only need both when you broadcast HD for Cable or TV. This is what closed captions are intended for. to create a scc file you only need 608 captions.

Kevin

[JimHarris]

I am a lawyer, not a computer expert, but still fairly apt at using programs. This chat demonstrates the failure to follow the #1 Rule:KISSS--Keep It Simple Stupid. This feature needs a Wizard. Period.

[harryfear]

It's incredible that after years this is still so buggy.

My only fix was to switch my 708 captions to Open Subtitles or Open Captions (using right click -> Modify Captions).

[Joao.Gri]

harryfear it is amazing! This is one of the reasons the industry is afraid of Premiere. In places with broadcast heavy works it is unthinkable to stumble upon this type of problem. There is no soft way of putting it, AVID's Media Composer is still king.

In this new update, they is said some bugs where corrected on the caption system, but it is still highly unusable. We still hace lots of problems with CEA-708, varying from persistent captions and the inability to format the text in some cases. The most absurd bug seems to continue too, the one where POP-UP captions choose not to show! Outrageous!

What is more absurd even, is that they have implemented the Export Caption Selecting The Timeline option, which enables us to make corrections to the captions as a whole, but they did not announce it. CRAZY!

And Premiere can't even read MCC files right! So, even if you export the files from the likes MacCaption or CaptionMaker and import them to Premiere (which is supposed to work) IT DOES NOT!

Man... frustration is the name of the game.

[harryfear]

I'm with you man!

Here is a write-out for anyone joining the mess at this stage:

Known issue with 708 captions

If you take a caption file from any source and put it into Premiere and set the caption to 708 you are likely to run into the issue of some random captions not displaying. They don't display in the Captions editor thumbnail or in the Program Monitor or Source Monitor.

Oftentimes it appears to be the first caption in a series of captions after a break of no captions. Sometimes the duration of the caption seems to matter (e.g.  shortening a caption makes the caption appear).

I spent a few hours today playing around with different versions of Premiere and different caption files. Even if you export the caption into different formats, verify it in a plain text editor for errors (exploring the XML, SCC, etc. formats), Premiere still bugs out. If you export the caption, fiddle with it in another editor and reimport it, the text is still liable to not display correctly.

Intended behaviour?

I can't find anything in the 708 specification that should cause Premiere to behave like this. Other apps like MacCaption that @Joao.Gri mentioned don't weird out like this.

Avoid 708

You can switch the whole caption to another format like Teletext and the dodgy caption in question suddenly displays correctly. So you can switch your caption to another format to avoid this issue.

Switch from Pop-On

If it doesn't matter to you how the subtitle appears, you can switch to another display method for that dodgy caption like Roll On instead of Pop-On but switching back doesn't clear it. This is a closer fix than anything else I know of.

SCC files

If you take a dodgy 708 Premiere caption into a caption editing application and then export to SCC format and inspect it in a plain text editor you can see that there is a missing clearance flag before the very caption that is failing to appear properly in Premiere. So it looks like there is an issue with Premiere and misunderstanding or not setting 'clearing' flags properly for previous captions. If there is not a 'clear' signal then the caption doesn't display properly somehow. The whole concept of clearing a caption before showing another one is part of the way these very proprietary and weird caption systems work.

Illustration

You can test this by creating a caption just before the one that doesn't appear and ensure the new one has at least one character in it. That then sets a kind of 'clear' flag that allows the next (dodgy) caption to display correctly. In this example there are two captions. The second short one in the timeline is the one that won't display. The long caption before it is the 'remedy' caption for this illustration. The remedy caption must contain a character (in this example a period/full stop character only). When the remedy caption that precedes the dodgy caption has a character, the dodgy caption is no longer problematic and its contents show in the Program Monitor, etc., etc.. In the image linked to below: left is with the remedy full stop (causing the dodgy caption to appear), and right is without it (the dodgy caption doesn't appear).

https://image.ibb.co/jOFSbc/708_bug.jpg (right click open – doesn't open in preview properly)

[Joao.Gri]

There is one note worth adding to you summary, @harryfear:

YOU GET WHAT YOU SEE, period.

If a caption is fixed on the screen for longer than it is supposed to, it will show as so on export. If a caption does not appear, well, it shall not appear on export. This behavior is consistent on every EMBEDDED export I've made. It is ironic that, on this matter, Premiere is consistent.

[HamTsai]

Thank you for the elaboration! I have just started really using Premiere and ran into caption issues. The fact that this thread started in 2014 with the same issue as I am having now is both amusing and scary considering how much time has passed without an effective and consistent solution.

[AdoptThisPet]

Folks, is there a way to export a file, such as .MXF, for Broadcast purposes and be able to see both the SD and the HD closed captions, meaning, the viewers at home can watch either SD or HD signal and view close captioning?

Thank you

[atldsl]

KevinAGI stated: (Not as simple as the explanation)

Can you please provide a detailed explanation that you used to make the 708 work?

Thanks,

Atldsl

[KevinAGI]

Ok for the brave at heart.

1) I created a new 708 Caption track and put one caption in it.

2) I exported an xml sidecar file just so I could capture the way the header is formed in the xml file.

3) I created my full 608 captions. I made sure I was sticking to all captioning standards and practices.

4) I exported an XML sidecar file of the 608 captions.

5) I opened up this xml file in my favorite text editor, and copied the header information of the 708 xml file created in step 2

6) I saved this as a new 708 xml file.

7) back in premier I imported this modified file.

8) I then put that caption track on my time line, and set my program monitor to display 708 captions.

9) I then modified them as necessary.

My tracks then look like this

V3 708 Caption Track

V2 608 Caption Track

V1 Video track

After that I exported a MXF 01pa File with the XDcam Codec.

I then transferred it to DMDS for distribution, and there validator validated the captions in the file and it passed QC.

Kevin