Multiple caption tracks visible for accessibility

I can't add much more as John H and Pierre B have explained most of what I need. I just wanted to add my voice to the request for multiple layers.

And no, anything ‘auto’ about placing captions would likely not be useful. For my use the timing, placement and style of the captions are pretty critical. I would prefer a fairly simple – I hope – ‘switch multiple tracks on’ button, rather than rely on an auto system.

There is also the problem with all my previous projects, they aren’t so much broken as useless.

I had to go back to one project after upgrading and it was impossible to output it without remaking the subtitle tracks. Luckily I still had 14.x on a machine which saved the day. So an option to revert to old behaviors would be good – not least because all the different layers appear in the new project, suggesting that the system sees them.

Without wanting to sound snide I'm curious about the thought process that led to removing multiple layer output (note: NOT multiple layers, just the output) *without* giving the option to reverse that - and I totally understand how this would be a non-default option, but I'm at a loss to understand the lack of a switch.

So, I support the 'force show' keystroke as suggested by Pierre - it could even be labelled 'The Pierre option'. (Just a thought.)

Thanks for the opportunity for the conversation.

I can understand why Adobe might have reduced the earlier capacity to enable multiple simultaneous caption tracks, thinking about the most common captioning applications. But, as has been written elsewhere by others, there are good reasons to RETAIN the ability (which is surely already present in the overall program design) to enable multiple caption tracks, perhaps as suggested by Pierre below, with a special key combination to force enabling multiple tracks as needed. The applications mentioned--mutiple language subtitles on one screen, or multiple participants needing subtitles with different formats or in different screen locations--are obviously important and necessary for some applications. Other uses include other sorts of notations on video (which can currently only be handled with the legacy title functions). But most important for those of us who use premiere to prepare videos for analysis of conversation and interaction is teh ability often to have carefully synchronized captions, linked to multiple participants, some of whom frequently OVERLAP one another in time. This can only be handled, I believe, with the easy fix being proposed here.

The idea of having an automatic feature to recognize different speakers and caption them in different styles is attractive, but, I think, a bit of a pipe dream at the moment, for two reasons. First, the speech recognition currently available just doesn't do an accurate enough job with captions, sometimes with at best) laughable results--although I am not one of the people enabled to try out the current beta versions for Premiere. Second, even if it did work well enough for some purposes in, say, English, there are many languages out there that need to be captioned which simply offer no such voice recognition options (and won't for some time to come).

So, finally, I vote strongly for RESTORING the ability to have (at least as a non-default option) multiple visible captions simultaneously, using the new improved caption workflow. The "nesting" workaround that Danny mentions does work, and that is what I have been using recently, but it is awkward and unnecessarily cumbersome when all the work required to achieve the desired result already has to be done first, and teh nesting trick must be resorted to wimply to render the desired result, in several steps.

To answer your question Francis... yes, for the sake of translating captions, it would be very helpful to be able to turn on a second track of captions in the original language for reference!

I understand the reasoning behind forcing only a single captions track to be visible, but it would be handier for users to have the option to see more than one.

Perhaps a keyboard modifier could be added for this? Ctrl+clicking the eyeball icon on a second captions track could enable it while also keeping the previously enabled track visible. This would keep the current behaviour intact (enabling a new track automatically hides the previous one, which is desirable and handy for users in most cases), while also giving users that really need to see more than one track at a time an easy way to do so.

What do you and others think of this proposed solution?

Fyi, to everyone else also frustrated by this, there is a workaround: create one sequence with a subtitle track and then add that sequence to another sequence (nesting sequences). This is a little burdensome but it’s workable.

Thank you for the reply, Francis. I can speak on the questions of multiple languages.

We don't always post our videos in a location where the captioning can be turned on/off or switched to different languages, so we need to have it visible and in both languages. The majority of videos I've created since Adobe removed the option for me to have multiple captions have been ones where I need to have multiple languages because they are in large areas like schools.

Currently, I have to export the file with one set of captioning, import that video, mute/hide all other layers, activate the second set of captioning, and export that file for the final version. It's a time-consuming process, especially when trying to be efficient in a workflow.

Just a note to point out that 15.1 doesn't fix this.

Can we have a comment as to whether Adobe is actually working on a fix?

I've never worked professionally on another NLE can anyone suggest a system that handles captions like Premiere used to?

Absolutely maddening that this isn't a feature!

Absolutely need this. We always caption with two languages on at the same time.

I have a series of sketches that rely on having two voices on screen (a cut away to another person interrupting while the first person is speaking etc) - when I import these into 15.0.0 I lose the ability to output them as two lines.

And of course I can't produce any new ones. Luckily I have ver 14.9 so I can still work - but it seems very surprising that you would now allow only one track given that it was so easy to do multiple tracks before.

Oh yes please, this is useful both in interview situations with multiple talking heads as well as multiple language needs.