Import H.264 file with captions into Premiere

[i.halevi]

Hello.

I have lots of H.264 files with embedded closed captions that I need to get into Premiere (video + audio + existing captions).

After editing, I'm ok exporting from Premiere a H.264+SRT combination. That's fine.
But first - I really need to get the embedded captions to appear in Premiere. Either directly, or first through some kind of conversation, extraction or demuxing.

Any ideas?

Nothing I've tried seems to work. I even tried bringing the file into Premiere CC 2015, but no luck either.

A sample file is available here: Dropbox - Adobe Premiere Captions - Simplify your life

If you watch it in VLC Player, and activate the Subtitles track, you'll see the captions there.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Imry

[Stan Jones]

Thanks for including the sample file. Saves some time!

I can confirm that PR will not import the caption stream from an H.264 embedded file. Note that you need to set preferences (under Media) to import captions, but even with that, it does not import the caption.

MediaInfo confirms that the caption stream is there. Note you have all 4 608 streams (CC1-CC4).

My favorite (free) tool - SubtitleEdit - does not open it. I googled "extract embedded captions" and came up with some options. I have tried none of them. Let us know what you find.

Note that there is a relatively new button in the PR caption panel for import settings. You can import caption files in a variety of formats and tell PR how to create its caption stream.

[i.halevi]

Thanks. The captions appear in QuickTime player, VLC and many other places.

I just still can't seem to find any way to extract the captions or edit them.

Very frustrating.

[Stan Jones · Accepted solution]

For your purpose, you may want a paid product with support.

I was looking only for free options, and this was the first option I found on google. I have not tried it, but I see that it allows you to select the stream you want for multiple streams.

https://www.tuneskit.com/freeware-tips/extract-subtitles-from-videos-for-free.html

Here's a thread on using ffmpeg, but it was not clear whether it will do mp4:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3169910/can-ffmpeg-extract-closed-caption-data

I tried this one, but it appears to have many unfinished features, but appears to have an option for working on a live stream:

https://www.videohelp.com/software/ccextractor

I was able to get the English in an srt file.

1
00:00:04,203 --> 00:00:20,653
Link Electronics Inc           
SCE-492 Firmrmware V           
App=C2 FPGA=C1 BL=X4           

2
00:00:20,655 --> 00:00:22,370
SCE-492 Firmrmware V           
App=C2 FPGA=C1 BL=X4           
3-Line Roll-u                 

[i.halevi]

Amazing! Thank you!

[Stan Jones]

Let us know how any of these work for you. Not for the faint of heart!

[i.halevi]

CCExtractor works great. Not as great as having Adobe Premiere just recognize H.264 embedded captions, but definitely usable for now.

Thanks for the help!

[Stan Jones]

Excellent! Thanks for reporting.

[excited_Genie16B8]

Any ideas?

You're starting with a finished product.  That's not the way things are done in the professional world.  You start with original media, edit something, create the subtitles and finish with the very thing you're trying to start with.

Consumer level software is often better designed for the kind of thing you're trying here.  You may have to do some research.

https://www.videohelp.com/software

[i.halevi]

The video I'm starting with is not a "finished product". It's a capture of a live event.

So...we produce live sporting events for ESPN. Each live event is captioned live after it's produced, but before it gets to ESPN.

The captions are embedded within the H264 stream, which we then record.

What I'd like to do is create highlights from that long H.264 recording. That's easy, but the embedded captions are streamed once I bring the full game recording into Premiere. So there's no way for me to keep the embedded captions while creating the highlights.