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Premiere 2021 Closed Caption text box position

Community Beginner ,
Aug 13, 2021 Aug 13, 2021

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I have Premiere 15.4.0 and was trying to position the text box in the center, while the text is left justified. I can click the zone grid for bottom center placement but that renders the text to be centered. The zone grid and align text parameters are linked, so left justify also means a left horizontaly positioned text box. Adjusting the horizontal size of the text box is not a solution, as it means all text boxs have to be adjusted manually instead of a uniform default centered text box with left justifed text. This was possible in 14.0.3.

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Adobe Employee ,
Aug 18, 2021 Aug 18, 2021

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Hi Christine5C51,

 

We're sorry to hear about this. Are you experiencing this issue with any specific closed caption format or is it happening with all of them?

 

Thanks,

Sumeet

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Community Expert ,
Aug 19, 2021 Aug 19, 2021

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Ok, I see it now! First, here's how you get what you want:

 

In the "Align and Transform" section, select middle bottom "zone." 

In the "Text" section, click the "Left Align Text" option.

Result: Text box is centered; Text is left aligned.

Note that you will not see this if your text spans the entire box. Also, this is easiest to see if you have 2 or more lines of text.

 

But, as you have described, the default for for the bottom middle Zone is text center aligned. Every time you change the Zone, the text alignment changes to the default. You can make a feature request to add more flexibility:

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro

 

If you create a Caption Track Style, it will respect the change. But that style will apply to all captions in the track. Meaning you can use only one zone.

 

Stan

 

 

 

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 21, 2021 Aug 21, 2021

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Hi Stan,

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, my Align and Transform section appears to be linked to the Text section. Meaning when I click on the bottom, middle "zone", then click left justify, the entire text box moves to the left. So, either this is a bug, or I am missing something here. I get there is more freedom with sizing and text options but the reality for us broadcast folks living in 608/708 land, is that CC has a standard default font and spacing. It makes it hard to negotiate screen space when I must look for a font that’s a close match to what the end CC will look like. It would be nice if there was a "default" CC font spacing option. Clients ask for product and/or legal not to be covered, so it is important to have the display font and spacing in Premiere closely match the output and I am finding that is not the case. If the 608/708 captions can be bound more closely to FCC guidelines would be more user friendly and remove the heavy manual editing that is required to get a quality consistent embedded 608/708.

I uninstalled, then reinstalled Premiere but this did not fix the issue.

This is what I see.

Here is Zone set to bottom center:

Zone box set to bottom center.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is zone set to bottom center AND text set to left justify:

Zone box bottom center and text left justify.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you see how the whole box moves left?

Let me know if I am missing something here. Thank you again for your feedback.

 

Christine

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Community Expert ,
Aug 21, 2021 Aug 21, 2021

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Oops! I missed that you were using closed captions. And I can't test the important part right now (actual playback in a closed caption device). (It's my BIRTHDAY and I'm headed to our pod neighbors for a nice dinner!) 

 

The "box" is the "bounding box" and it is not moving. It is just really big. So the box stays centered, but the left edge is where your left justified text is going.

 

The quick test I can do it is to create a sequence with a 708 caption. Make them 3 lines each (easier to see alignment). Set one caption to bottom center and left alignment. Drag the bounding box so it is smaller. Make another caption bottom right and centered alignment - just so there's a check for whether there's a default at issue.

 

Export mxf op1a with embed and set to import to PR. Preferences are set to import captions on import.

 

The reimported file is "trying" to be correct, but the center zone/left justified leaves the third line RIGHT justified. But the real test is to play your exported file in an application that will use regular closed captioning display.

 

More details about the exported/imported file: In the timeline, it treats it as one asset; I cannot select individual captions, or even the caption track by clicking in the timeline. I CAN select individual caption segments by clicking on them in the Program Monitor or the text panel. But that is when I discover that each "line" is treated as a separate layer in the EGP, and the justification is odd (and incorrect).

 

Ugly... Bug report should be filed. Even if this doesn't work with closed caption standards, it should display correctly in PR and upon reimport.

 

So if you haven't, test the output on a closed caption device. Let us know.

 

Stan

 

 

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 25, 2021 Aug 25, 2021

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Hi Stan,

Anytime the bounding box is adjusted, the embedded file has placement discrepancies. See screen grabs below.

This is from within Premiere:

bounding box placement.JPG

This is the resulting embedded 608/708 file:

open cap for adobe.JPG

Align and Transform need to fucntion independently from the Zone Grid because any adjustments to the bounding box size results in placement issues like you see above.

Thanks,

Christine

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Community Expert ,
Aug 25, 2021 Aug 25, 2021

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Thanks for reporting.

 

Stan

 

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 01, 2023 Aug 01, 2023

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I'm experiencing the same problem as Christine from 2 years ago. Trying to work around the problem by changing the 'set horizontal position' value, but it refuses to displace any further than maybe 150px, even if I enter a higher value. I'm using the Premiere 23.5.0. Has a solution been found? 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 01, 2023 Aug 01, 2023

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@CameraPoet, This is an old thread and some things have changed.

 

First, confirm that you actually need Closed Captions and that you plan to embed these. If you are going to burn in or if you can use regular subtitles, there are more options.

 

Stan

 

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 01, 2023 Aug 01, 2023

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In this instance, I will burn in the captions. I would appreciate if you can point me in the right direction for that situation. PS: Thanks for the quick and helpful response.

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Community Expert ,
Aug 01, 2023 Aug 01, 2023

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Back up project in case you discover you needed the closed captions. But if you are burning in for this project, just right click on the caption track header, pick settings, and change the type to Subtitle.

 

Now you'll have more options. If the alignment options aren't obvious, post back.

 

Stan

 

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 01, 2023 Aug 01, 2023

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This issue has not been resolved. There is no way to have the captions left justified while also being horizontally centered either in subtitle or 608/708 mode. I am using 23.4.0. Please advise if I am missing something. Thanks. 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 01, 2023 Aug 01, 2023

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@Christine5C51,

 

This is deceptive, in part, because of the text bounding box for captions. The Zone sets the bounding box. The paragraph alignment sets the text within the bounding box.

 

In this screenshot, #1 shows the bounding box. (I selected a caption in the timeline, placed the playhead so we can see that caption, and left-clicked once on the text in the Program Monitor to show the bounding box - the dotted line. (Double-clicking would place us in the mode to edit the text in the Program Monitor.) #2 shows the Zone setting. I picked middle center so we can see the options better. Normally this is bottom center. Notice that even though it is centered, the left edge of it is pretty far to the left. #3 is the paragraph/text alignment section. It is set to centered, so we can see that with the bounding box centered in the frame, and the text centered in the box, it all looks centered.

 

PR Caption Alignment 01.png

 

In this next screenshot, the Zone is left center and the text is still left. Because the bounding box is so wide, there is not a lot of difference, but you can see that the box is now shifted to the left edge (as far left and the current setting allows) and the text is to the left in the box.

 

PR Caption Alignment 03.png

 

The next screenshot illustrates the center bounding box and text left is easiest to see if we make the bounding box narrower and use multiple lines.

 

PR Caption Alignment 05 2 line.png

 

You can use a caption track style to make the bounding boxes the same size.

 

Stan

 

 

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 01, 2023 Aug 01, 2023

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Adjusting the bounding box for each text event is very time consuming since not all bounding boxes will be the same width depending on how much text is inside each text event. 

In the below screen shots, I have set the bounding box to within 4x3 title safe and the 2 text events could not use the same box as set by the track style because they look very different. 

Screenshot 2023-08-01 at 8.20.47 PM.png

 

Screenshot 2023-08-01 at 8.21.00 PM.png

 

Because 608 and 708 captions are used for broadcast, there should be some standardization in the way they can be formatted. Also, any adjustments to the bounding box results in QT embedded files with incorrect positioning that do not match what is displayed in Premiere, as mentioned in the first post. See embedded export screen grab below. This is directly out of Premiere and not using a third party software to embed. 

Screenshot 2023-08-01 at 8.34.37 PM.png

 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 02, 2023 Aug 02, 2023

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@Christine5C51,

 

omg. I got confused when camerapoet said the use case was for burn in. My apologies for continuing to confuse this.

 

I looked at this in PR 2020 (v 14.9.0), which was the last version before the captioning workflow change. I don't see any bounding box; just the background, which operates like the current version: background is per line and you have no control over it. The text justification is independent of Zone.

 

I tested a 708 track in 23.5, which I believe is the same as 23.4, but has some changes from 21.x. When you select bottom center for the Zone, it changes the text to left and bottom align. Any left zone set left alignment. Any bottom zone sets bottom alignment, etc. You can set a style to change this for the whole track.

 

Previews and burn-ins are correct. When embedded, the results are not correct. I tested the embed by reimporting to PR and creating a sequence and also by playing in Switch. I do not see the actual captions in the free version of Switch, but it shows the line positioning and length as the same as the (incorrect) results of the imported file in PR.

 

In PR, with bottom middle (and text centered), I see only single layer captions and all in the same zone. But the bounding box is set to be exact height, but then gets adjusted so some captions jump up or down compared to the previous. If I set the zone to the middle, some captions are single layers; some have been broken into multiple layers. When broken into layers, the layers show as different zones from each other. All captions which started as middle zone, left/top text align have used different zones, alignment settings, and box size from the original PR settings.

 

Did you file a bug report in 2021? Or do you see another to upvote? The bug system has moved from uservoice to the Bugs section of this forum.

 

Stan

 

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 02, 2023 Aug 02, 2023

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I did file a bug report in 2021. I will file another. Thanks Stan. 

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Community Expert ,
Aug 02, 2023 Aug 02, 2023

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Excellent. Thanks.

 

Stan

 

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Community Beginner ,
Aug 02, 2023 Aug 02, 2023

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Excellent brute force solution and excellenterific guide. Sadly, I agree with @Christine5C51 that individual custom edits require an unreasonable amount of work for the length of videos I am working with, and manual standardization is challenging.

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