Exporting open captions as .srt file (Premiere Pro 14.9 or earlier)

[Jonathan Ley]

Hi,

The Adobe help page on working with captions (Learn to work with captions in Premiere Pro ) states that:

'You can export Open Captions as Open Caption formatted SRT and XML files and also convert single stream sidecar and embedded single stream files to Open Caption in Premiere Pro.'

I'm working with Open Captions (in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017.0.1) and whilst I can burn them into the finished film no problem, I can't seen any way to export the open captions as a separate .srt file.

Any help would be much appreciated!

[Kevin-Monahan]

Your going to love me. Here is a workaround on this glitch:

When you are ready to export, select your timeline and SOMETHING else in the Project Window. Then when you export and go to the Captioning window- the export sidecar option will magically work.

Hope this saved you hours of frustration.

Hi Zach,

Thanks for the post, and sorry for the confusion, however, that is not how to export a .srt from an Open Caption. You need to select the caption file in the Project panel, then choose File > Export > Captions. You can export an .srt from the resulting dialog box.

Thanks,
Kevin

[ccoutrakon]

This doesn't work for me. When I go to File>Export, the "Captions" option is greyed out. Is there a way to export Open Captions as an SRT file?

[noodlebone]

hey, I had the same problem these days.

I imported a .srt file as open captions, I had to edit the content a lot, adding/deleting/formating the lines of subtitle.

In order to export a new .srt from adobe CC, I made a subsequence ( right click on the captions track from my timeline- new subsequence), then the option from FILE- EXPORT- CAPTIONS became available again.

maybe this is helpful for some of you.

In VLC was a slightly delay (less than 2 seconds), but I could adjust it quite easily in subtitle edit. I don’t know what causes the delay, but at least the export works with this unintuitive solution.

[Stan Jones]

Thanks for reporting your workaround.

noodlebone  wrote

then the option from FILE- EXPORT- CAPTIONS became available again.

So after creating the subsequence, you select the .srt in the project panel, and then File -> Export -> Captions?

I haven't any situation where simply selecting the .srt in the project panel does not activate the File -> Export -> Captions. Any idea what results in it being greyed out?

[noodlebone]

Well, if I add the captions track in my timeline and I make further cuts on my edit, I get to the situation where I’m not able to export the captions as .srt using FILE- EXPORT-CAPTIONS (it’s greyed out). I don’t get it why. It’s the only way I could manage to export the new .srt file.

[Stan Jones]

For some users, it was as simple as selecting the caption file in the project panel. That's why I'm asking how specifically you are doing that step.

[Joao.Gri]

Hello there, Stan Jones​.

Right now I do not need to use the workaround, but some updates ago the simple act of selecting a Sequence or a Caption File on the Project Panel and jumping to File-->Export would not give me the option to export the caption. This specific issue has been corrected in my experience.

The Caption Tool is still a mess. Complete with bugs and things that just do not work correctly. CEA-708, for instance, doesn't play or export correctly when set to POP-UP, formatting is still amazingly cumbersome and the lack of proper instructions on how the tool works leaves us discovering things on the go and blindly. Apparently all the functionalities are there, but key things continue to fail where they should not.

Sorry for the rant. my plan was just to make things clearer. 🙂

[Stan Jones]

Rants allowed!

There have been fixes and changes, and it can make working with captions (still) tedious at best. And unusable for some workflows at worst.

I'm trying to keep track of what issues are problems in which version. That is not always clear.

[philippec24614733]

Hi, i've been using this exact method precisely. Yesterday it was working fine when i tried it for the first time. This morning i add more captions, then export a new srt and now the subtitles don't show up on top of my video when i open it in vlc, even though i activated the srt file. I do not understand why this is happening. Any help would be greatly appreciated !

thanks

Phil

[Stan Jones]

So you are adding the subtitle file in VLC and then selecting the correct track?

[philippec24614733]

Yes

[philippec24614733]

i found a solution.

I exported the .srt file using the default settings, which means i did not change the font, the color and so on...

Then, when i imported it into youtube, i was able to customize the look of the subtitles straight inside the youtube parameters.

It took me ages to find this way around. It is extremely strange  to me that the customization of a subtitle's look in Premiere makes it impossible to import it inside vlc (the font which was yellow appeared pink in vlc, many users have talked about this issue on forums)

without having issues. I contacted vimeo about this, i am waiting for there reply.

Anyway, the video will be posted on youtube so i'm fine.

take care

[el hombreorquesta]

I love you! (hey! just for this 🙂

[huiehuie]

I LOVE YOU!

[Since-1999-AE-4]

legend

[alexs19751423]

Genius

[Rick_X]

THAAAANK YOUUU!!!!!!!!! That worked!

[Arvo-Latile]

Hero

[MTFNT]

Can you explain this? I'm not quite sure what to select.

[cmkrishi]

How to export essential graphics as SRT files

[Andreas Kiel]

For Mac I've created premiereTitles for SRT (and others) to Graphics&Type and vice versa.

Demo:

http://www-spherico.com/filmtools/TitleExchange/PTI/pti.dmg

Andreas

[jacquesw84001398]

Hi everyone,

I am having a similar issue: I have imported a srt file into premiere and have worked on it to make it perfect (timecodes and text), and I now need to export it as a new srt file.

If I follow the instruction given above (ie. select the caption in project panel, then export/caption) I just end up with a duplicate of my original .srt file, ie without all the changes I have made to it in Premiere.

If I export my entire project (export / media) , I only have the option to burn captions into video, since for some reason when I imported my srt file originally it treated it as open captions instead of closed captions (I did not pay attention to that since I wasn't aware of the issue with open captions.... !).

What can I do? (I am quite desperate since this is a 20 minutes documentary and it took me a long time to make those captions right....)

cheers,

Jacques

[Joao.Gri]

Try selecting the TIMELINE file on the PROJECT WINDOW and going to Export --> Caption --> SRT.

[jacquesw84001398]

Thanks Joao, this is a step forward in the right direction, it allowed me to export an srt file (I even have the option for an xml file) however, that exported file stops after 59 captions (5.20 minutes).... my film is 20 minutes long and has 240 captions.

Has anyone faced that issue before?

[jacquesw84001398]

btw, same issue if I export to xml file.