How can one use the razor tool to cut caption?

[irinaerrr]

I've tried cutting my captions, but unfortunately, after I cut and extend them, subtitles from the original caption begin to show. If I delete them, they are deleted from the next resulting caption as well. How can I avoid this problem?

Many thanks to whomever has the solution.

[Mike Dziennik]

Are you using open captions?

It is better to adjust the timing and duration of each cation using it's own In & Out rather than cutting up the caption clip. Make one large captios clip for the whole duration of your sequence and then adjust each caption's in and out to put them where you want.

[Stan Jones]

Edit: This post from 2018 is no longer correct. See this March 2021 post in this thread for an update:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/how-can-one-use-the-razor-tool-to-cut-caption/m-p/118827...

Original "Correct" answer: You can't really cut a caption stream the way you would a video clip. The whole caption stream is always there.

And a disadvantage of using more than one stream for Open Captions is that you can't put them together for export as .srt. If you are just  burning in, no problem.

One strategy would be to duplicate the caption stream in project panel. Select the new stream and, in the caption panel, select/shift click to select the ones you want to delete, and click the "minus" icon to delete. (Delete key doesn't do it.)

If you don't really need to split it, but move things apart, or insert, here was a great bit of info:

"If you hold cmd/control while dragging out the end of a caption it ripple shifts all the captions after it. So you can do this for the size space you need then bring the one caption back down to size and insert the new captions in the space."

You might need to drag out the end of the caption stream on the timeline when you do this.

[OsakaWebbie]

I tried the "duplicate and remove the ones not in that segment" method. But after I have removed the empty beginning of the caption stream for non-first segments, things act weird:

• If I try to adjust the end of the last caption in a segment, the end time changes to the time WITHIN that segment, causing that last caption to disappear (because the end time is prior to the start time). If I first add a blank caption after it, the last real caption can be adjusted, but weirdly, it still shows until the end of the caption stream, so that doesn't work either.
• If I want to adjust the change from one caption to another, sliding the gray endpoints on the black bars doesn't do anything. I have to go to the Captions pane and adjust the time there, instead of visually. I'm guessing this also has something to do with the fact that the caption stream no longer starts at zero relative to the captions within it. It would be much easier to adjust visually based on the audio waveform (when a sentence ends) than guessing the timecode.

I don't care about export, so that's not an issue. I used open captions so I could import them (originally the times and texts were in a spreadsheet - I used Excel formulas and text export to convert to .srt structure for the import), and also to adjust the font/color/etc. for all of them at once instead of 500 separately. I'm past that point now, so if there is a way to convert them now to essential graphics or legacy titles, that's fine.

[Stan Jones · Accepted solution]

This is an old thread, and there are two major problems with my answer here.

1) I discovered after this time that it was always possible to combine the split up caption stream. Select the SEQUENCE in the Project Panel. Then File -> Export -> Captions. You'll get a caption stream with all the captions in one file and the timecodes from the SEQUENCE. There are some gotchas, primarily that the only captions to export are from one layer. Then you can import that exported file and use it.

2) My method, "duplicating" the stream inside PR results in problems - especially edited captions not showing up correctly. So, yes, avoid that.

The public Premiere Pro Beta has a new caption workflow that is using the essential graphics engine. This eliminates many of the problems with captions, in addition to adding new features. But because of those changes, I don't expect any changes in the current caption system. Note that the Beta is a major version change (version 15). So if you work with a project in the Beta, your project will NOT be backwards compatible with the current shipping version of Premiere Pro.

Of interest for your purpose, it will  import an old project with "old" captions. But they are not strictly speaking essential graphics objects.

Stan

[OsakaWebbie]

I don't feel comfortable committing to a Beta when I only have one more day to finish this. (It needs to premiere on YouTube less than 36 hours from now, and some sleep is necessary.)

My captions were irreparably screwed up from trying things, and there were not enough undos in history to go back to when I had something usable. So I exported parts that were working, put them together in a text editor, and imported the resulting file back in. I thought I could use nested sequences (make the captions and original length video a sequence, then use that in another sequence and chop it up there), but the captions carry over, so that the resulting sequence cannot be cut up either!

I confirmed that the "control-endpoint-drag" trick works for moving captions to the right, but I can't figure out any way to move them to the left - I have a six-minute chunk I need to remove from my video with over 400 captions after it. I can slide one caption to the left, but if I select more than one, I can't slide them. So I guess my only option is to encode the untrimmed video with burned-in captions, then take that result and chop it up, enduring a generation loss and several extra hours of encoding (I have a slow computer). I'm still collecting some images that are supposed to be overlaid (obviously with the caption on top), so I don't know what I'm going to do about those once the captions are burned in (manually create the captions during those images, I guess). Right now it's the middle of the night here in Japan and I'm trying to do final checking of all the captions' timing before I encode, since I won't have time to do it repeatedly. Any clues to make this easier are enthusiastically welcome. In this hour-long interview video, I have one chunk that needs to be removed and two places where short external clips need to be inserted. In an ideal world I also would have trimmed other little spots that have long pauses or word repeats (this is an interview), but it's too hard with the caption issue.

[Stan Jones]

Correct; no Beta in these circumstances!

See this thread for a workaround to delete a bunch of captions and move to the left.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/how-to-move-all-captions-at-once/m-p/11163048#M273792

This is the relevant part:

• This (Ctrl-drag) works the same dragging to the left. Except that it only changes up to the beginning of that caption. And even if you drag past the caption to the left, all that happens is the caption you are dragging is deleted, and the captions to the right ripple left - by that small amount.
• Workaround. If you have no captions in the area to be removed, just create one long caption in that area, and then Ctrl-drag the end of that caption left as discussed. If you already have more or less continuous captions, something has to be deleted or otherwise changed. So this depends on the details - are some captions kept and other deleted, etc. Let's assume it is a large block to be deleted. I could not see a way to do it in the timeline, but in the Caption Panel, click on the first caption to be deleted, shift click the NEXT to last, and hit Delete. Now in the Timeline, extend the next to last to the left and Ripple adjust it and voila!

I would be terrified to do any of this with a deadline looming! Backups, backups, backups! Good luck!

Stan

[OsakaWebbie]

That worked! I tried something similar before writing my last comment, but I must have missed a step somehow, because it seemed that I could ripple to the right but not to the left. (I didn't have any captions to delete - I was just trying to get rid of a gaping hole.) But your point about watching the color of the indicator helped - on my screen it looks more yellow than white, but either way, making sure it was no longer red was helpful. I now have a single timeline with everything editable - woohoo!

[Stan Jones]

Excellent!

[DeterminedTT]

This link takes me back to the same discussion. Four years and no progress on deleting captions? This is ridiculous design. Most caption tracks are more lengthy than a video to be used. I have already spent hours manually selecting hundreds of captions for ten minutes of caption track and over an hour+ of captions to delete. Because of the drag option, the select tool often selects empty space or highlights the drag, meaning starting over. 

If anyone has a viable option to actual cut excess captions let me know.

I guess I will use YouTube for captioning, even though it's less than ideal.

Please post if there is a relevant, current option. 

Let's move toward accessibility, please.

Thank you!

[Stan Jones]

What version of PR are you working in? Just after my last post in this thread, PR 2021 (15.0) was released with the major caption workflow change.

Stan

[adamb95504020]

Why can't you ?  this would be so much easier that way. Do you know how select multiple captions to be able to move them around within the captions clip ?

[Stan Jones]

Just make your "captions" as titles using legacy titles or the essential graphics. Move them anyway you want! But then they are not "captions" if that is what you need for "closed captions" or an srt for youtube etc.

For caption streams, it would be a feature request. Otherwise, they just don't work that way.

Now it is true, you might be able to do that with closed captions, since you can export a sidecar (srt and some others) when exporting. Open caption won't, and has to be exported from the project bin, where the captions are still in their same stream. You are limited on the style elements. You can't drag out (extend the length) of cut elements as noted above - the other captions in the stream are still there.

[eduardoc82993850]

You, sir Stan Jones are a genius! You saved me hours, if not days, of work.

[Stan Jones]

eduardo, thank you. But not only am I not a genius, I need to update the information in this thread!

I discovered about a year after this was written, that PR has the ability to export Open Caption streams that are on a single layer in a sequence to a sidecar file. And the timecodes will be what is in the sequence, not what is in the single or multiple srt (or whatever) files the captions started from.

Just select the SEQUENCE in the Project Panel, then File -> Export -> Captions.

The ripple update also works, but this adds some additional, and very powerful, options.

Also, as of PR 2020, you can get this same type of sidecar from Open Captions when using File -> Export -> Media and selecting the Caption tab.

Stan

[Sam-Sapien5FF9]

Hi Stan,

I cut and moved around my captions and created a nest of all of them too. And then cut and moved them around some more. Is this going to put the timecode out of wack or will premiere know and adjust the timecode accordingly. I've exported an .srt file and everything is in sync. But will the timecode be ok for uploading to online platforms, i.e. Amazon?

Asking for a friend. 

[Stan Jones]

I suspect it depends. I have not tested in the latest PR version (14.5), and you have several interesting changes. As I noted earlier in this thread, the "sequence caption sidecar" export must be in one video layer. I wonder if it will handle a nested caption stream.

I see not reason that, if the export worked and reimporting it to PR seems okay, that the timecodes will not also work in third party platforms.

Let us know your results, and I'll try to test when I can.

Stan

[Sam-Sapien5FF9]

I will update.

Also, when I re-import the .srt, everything is in sync but the size of the actual caption is very, very small. It seems to be an import setting as it looks fine after uploading to YouTube. Do you know if it is a caption import setting, or a glitch in premiere's caption export settings??

[Stan Jones]

Yes, you can use PR import settings (button in Caption panel) to modify the font properties.

And Youtube allows the USER to specify font size, etc. Youtube 

Also, PR srt export does not carry style information (such as font size and color) unless you check the relatively newer feature to include styling information.

Stan