Transcription in PP is a mess. Can anyone help with my issue please?

[arewenotmen]

God I hate using PP for captions.

So I'm halfway through editing the transcription of a 30-minute video with two speakers. PP won't let me split the segments so I can separate the speakers in certain points. It would appear I should have hit "Create Static Transcript" first.

If that's the case, why the hell was I able to create a transcript using a different method?

If I now hit "Create Static Transcript" it will re-transcribe everything and undo the hours or work I've put in so far.

Why is this not far more intuitive? Why was I given the option to create a transcription that isn't fully editable?

Is there any way I can rescue this?

In related news, I usually do all my captioning with Veed.io because unlike PP it can actually generate decent animated text for social. Really winds me up spending ££££ each year on a Creative Cloud sub yet I still have to pay more to do stuff that should be built into PP. Rant ends. 

[mattchristensen]

@arewenotmen Premiere Pro sequences have two modes when it comes to transcripts. The default mode is for Text-Based Editing, where the transcript is created dynamically by combining the transcripts from each source clip. So the workflow is that the source clips are all transcribed, and then in the sequence they just automatically assemble into your sequence transcript. In this way if you delete a clip, it's transcript also disappears, etc.

The other mode, which is what happens when you choose "Generate Static Transcript", takes the audio from your sequence at that point in time and transcribes it. If you change the sequence (trim, remove a clip, etc) you'll need to re-transcribe, because it's not dynamic and it's just a static representation of that one point in time.

In your case, split and merge buttons are missing because you're in the first mode (dynamic) and so the sections of transcripts are controlled automatically by the clip bounds. You can see this if you add an edit point in the audio, it will split the transcript at that point. If you want to fix the speaker by splitting a segment and then changing the speaker, you should go back to the source clip and fix it in that transcript. The change you make there will then flow automatically into your edit sequence transcript. Just press F to Match Frame from your sequence to that clip, and in the Text panel you now see the source transcript and the split/merge buttons are there.

I hope that helps!

[arewenotmen]

Many thanks for taking the time to reply Matt. That makes sense, thanks for the explanation.

Honestly though, as someone who spends a lot of time in PP but rarely uses it for transcriptions/captioning, I find this side of things incredibly unintuitive. The UI really needs to make it more obvious when it comes to these different sorts of transcripts.

"Generate Static Transcript" for example isn't exactly obvious what it's for. I hit a button that said something like "Create Transcript" and then I was expecting to find all the usual split segment etc options there. 

Might be miles out on this but I'd have thought a decent percentage of PP users were at the more professional end of the spectrum and wouldn't have so much use for text-based editing so I'm not sure why it's the default mode.

Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to reply and for helping me out, it's much appreciated.