Problems converting Closed Captions to Open Captions in Premiere 2015.4

Report · Nov 10, 2016

I was excited to learn about the support for Open Captions and the ability to convert Closed to Open, but when I import .scc or .srt files, and convert them to open captions, they are always 480x720 with no way to adjust or change the size. The low-resolution makes this feature un-usable. Anyone know of a work around or fix for this?

Report · Nov 11, 2016

Update: I also tried in Premiere CC 2017, it seems to have the same problem. Anyone else encounter this?

Converting closed to open captions was a feature they advertised, had anyone found it to work?

Report · Nov 11, 2016

Adobe, please fix this!

All these recent threads are having the same issue:

Creating Open Captions from Closed Captions Files (PP 2015.3) Issue

.srt caption file imports as 720x480 and I need it at 1920x1080

Re: Open Captions Problems

Open caption importing is still a mess in 2015.4

Premiere reads .srt subtitle files metadata incorrectly?

Managing subtitles in Premiere Pro CC 2015.3

CreativeCOW

How does a GOOD Open Captions workflow look like in Premiere Pro?

Report · Nov 11, 2016

Are the .scc/.srt files CEA-608 captions? They're legacy captions from Standard Def, so you're stuck with their 720x480 limit.

Another user found a way to change 608s to 708s that might help you out.

Need to change Caption Stream from CEA-608 to CEA-708

Report · Nov 11, 2016

Thanks Jax, I'll try that. I've also tried importing .mcc files, which are supposed to be fore high-def, but those (and every other subtitle format I've tried) all import at 720x480 as well. It seems to be the way Premiere imports them or reads their metadata, etc.

petergaraway, I saw you had answered a question about open and closed captions (and offered additional help) on this creativecow post, can you help with this?

Thanks!

-Stephen

Report · Nov 11, 2016

Hi Jax, it looks like it's the same problem whether the file is 608s or 708s.

Report · Nov 21, 2016

Hi All,

Thanks for tagging me Stephen. Unfortunately, I do not have a solution (yet) to share with you. I’ve looked into solutions within Premiere and 3rd party tools and didn’t find anything useful. I spoke with some folks from the team who worked on implementing captions. To give a little background on how/why this was implemented the way it was.

“It is somewhat intentional. To shoehorn the notion of captions into the video clip/track workflow, we had to treat things as if it were a special type of video media. As such, video often implies a specific number of pixels horizontally, and a certain number of pixels vertically. So the following defaults are in place:

· CEA-608 = DV NTSC (e.g. 720x480)

· CEA-708 = DV NTSC or DV NTSC Widescreen depending on the widescreen flag set in CEA-708

· EBU Teletext = DV PAL.

This was all before the notion of open captions. Now that we have open captions, the pixel size _does_ matter as it will affect the fidelity of the text. Unfortunately, for an SRT file, there’s no image dimensions in the file to tell us what it should be. It is just timecodes and text.”

I wish I could provide you guys with a good solution for right now, but I’ve yet to find one. I’ll post back if I do. As we look into how to address this feature, I (we) would love to hear how you think this feature could best be implemented. Please share here or create a feature request or both! http://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

Best,

Peter Garaway

Report · Nov 23, 2016

Hi habitofseeing,

I'd recommend trying SUGARfx's Subtitles plugin. The price is reasonable enough and it does the job. Be prepared for long-ish render times though.

http://www.sugarfx.tv/info/subtitles_SUGARfx.html

Regarding how this feature could be implemented, and this quote from the engineers: "Unfortunately, for an SRT file, there’s no image dimensions in the file to tell us what it should be. It is just timecodes and text." It seems like the obvious solution would be to allow the user to specify frame rate and size on import of the SRT, or whatever other caption file you're using. I've also noticed that Premiere can't handle blank entries in an SRT file; it cuts out any captions after the blank line.

The current implementation seems as narrowly built as most new CC features. No flexibility. You have to use it exactly as Adobe suggest, and if your use-case deviates in any way the feature is useless to you.

Adobe's use-cases almost never take into account that you may be using software other than theirs, either. In this case specifically, it seems ridiculous that they wouldn't factor in that, in order to create open captions, you would use a captioning service to transcribe your video, or if you're transcribing yourself, you'd use one of a handful of purpose-built programs that allow you to transcribe far quicker than you could creating them manually within Premiere as the feature stands. Right now, Open Captions are good for the odd translated line here or there, but you may as well use the title generator. Until you can properly import caption files, it saves no time and adds nothing.

Report · Nov 15, 2016

Any help from Adobe on this?

Report · Nov 16, 2016

Same, when I import a .srt file that I created myself, it comes in at a 720 x 480 resolution. How do I import it in HD? Do I just scale to frame size?

Report · Nov 18, 2016

If you scale it, it becomes pixelated or blurry, even though it's theoretically just vector-based text. So that doesn't work either

Report · Nov 18, 2016

There may not be a solution other than redoing the 708 captions in Premiere.

I have a copy of CaptionMaker which exports 608s & 708s. However, the "HD" 708s are still 720x480-based graphics, the placement doesn't change.

Hope I'm wrong and there's a better solution...

Report · Jan 02, 2017

Not a perfect solve - but I'm in the same situation. The first thing I did after I imported the .srt file was to drop it into the timeline. Then right-click and select Scale to Frame Size. This works better than "set to frame size". It also seems to hold up just fine when it's scaled, as it appears to still treat it as live type.

Then comes the challenge with adjusting the position. You can't use the Caption settings. This would require that you select each caption in the timeline, one at a time. I used the Effect Controls to move the position of the actual "clip" where I wanted the text to appear.

Report · Jun 11, 2018

I think I found a working solution, you have to right click on the captions file in the project bin and then select Adjust -> Interpret Footage -> Captions. Here you should be able to change your settings. But make a copy before you do it, once the captions are open you can't close them.

Hope this works for you, regards Anselm

Report · Nov 27, 2019

I've finally found a work around in 2019 that I believe will work in 2018 and maybe 2017.

I create the 608 closed captions with the default formatting.

Export that as an .SRT file.

In the Captions panel, click "Import Settings".

Set "Import File Type" to SubRip Subtitle File (.srt)

Check all of the "Overwrite file settings" options and change the valuse to what you want your imported file to look like. For me taht was this...

Then do File > Import and choose your .SRT file. It will show up in the Project panel with the .srt file name but will be have the settings you specified in the Import Settings dialog.