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Nathan32031819k668
Participant
December 18, 2024
Open for Voting

Generate captions from text/script files instead of from audio

  • December 18, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 1264 views

I'm trying to edit a video and put in captions, but it'd be nice if Premiere Pro could auto-generate captions from a script I have for the video. Instead, the only feature to generate captions is to auto-generate captions from the audio of the video, which takes much longer and is less accurate than if I wrote a script myself.

I found a sort of workaround by following this tutorial, but it doesn't include a way for you to indicate when you'd like the captions to split from one caption's appearance to another. 

It'd be nice if, whenever there was a line break in the text, a new caption was started.  Sometimes, you want one caption to end at the end of one sentence, but it can get tedious to edit the text and timing several times when Premiere Pro automatically cuts off a caption because it's hit a character limit. 

    1 reply

    Stan Jones
    Community Expert
    Stan JonesCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 18, 2024

    @Nathan32031819k668,

     

    Formatting a script to be imported/pasted to the PR transcript will not do what you want. Such formatting is ignored when PR creates the captions. That is why the tutorial you reference can use that method. The entire transcript is merged into a single segment/paragraph, and then a script (with no line breaks) is copied/pasted into that segment as a text edit. There are no transcript timecodes, but PR is using word by word timings, not a strict segment timecode like captions do.

     

    An alternative is to use the Import Corrected Transcript to bring in an external script.

     

    But either way, PR uses its own logic for breaking the transcript into captions. The Captioning Preferences allow only so much control. For many users they are fine. And no matter what method you use, if you are particular, you will have caption-by-caption adjustments to make. The goal is to minimize those.

     

    Another method for you is to use a program such as the free Subtitle Edit, and create your captions from your script there, using the video exported from PR for timing. SE provides more choices for length of captions etc. You can create captions in PR, and export srt from there to use as timings in SE. SE allows you to import timings from one file and the text from another. Once done in SE, export that as srt and, if you are burning the captions in, import to PR.

     

    Stan

     

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