Split Caption at Text Under Playhead

[Stan Jones]

See this post for a no longer available UserVoice request. Can staff recover it? I do not find it or a similar one in a search. Is there already a request for what I am asking?

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/transcription-fixing-automated-errors/m-p/12...

When a caption is split in the Timeline, the timecodes are split by the playhead position in the timeline. This is correct and is the current behavior in 23.6 and Beta 24.1.0.21.

But the entire caption text is repeated in each of the new segments. There was much discussion about this in the Beta forum during development, and there are continuing requests for a different behavior. I don't think any users are advocating for the current behavior.

I recommend that the text be split so the beginning text through any word completed before the playhead position goes to the new, earlier caption segment and the rest of the text goes to the new later caption segment.

Note that this would not apply to operations in the Text Panel as currently set: a split in the Text Panel uses a timecode in the middle of the segment being split; it does not reference the playhead.

Also note there are different issues for split and merge and these may vary depending on whether we are talking about captions, source transcripts, or sequence transcripts. For example, see this post about the changed merge behavior:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-bugs/merge-captions-suddenly-gray-and-unlcikable/idc-p/1...

Stan

[David Lloyd 88]

I can second this request.  Currently my workflow cleaning up captions for social videos means if I split a caption I then need to go into each caption by double clicking on it, delete the end of the text from the first and the beginning of the text from the second. Which is time consuming.

It'd also be good to remove all the double-clicks and make it so that you can just use keys (e.g. Tab) from one caption text box to the next. e.g. when you double-click a caption in the sequence it should open for text editing. Even if it's very minor corrections or changes which are needed to the auto-transcribe it still takes a long time due to all the clicking and moving which could be avoided with a better workflow.

[rayeschiller]

Yes! Basic phone apps like InShot and CapCut have the ability to split the captions on the screen just by clicking 'new line' at the right word. Please make this feature a priority

[baarokun]

Yes ! This is needed asap, it takes 5x more time to delete the text, verify if its the correct one etc..

[Stan Jones]

I tested today in current release 25.4.0, Beta 25.6.0.31, and 24.6.5.

The status of this request is the same: when you split a caption, it duplicates the entire caption text in both segments that result from the split.

I'm posting this primarily to give my observations about the timecode split below. But I realized that part of the challenge of making this change is in automating where to split the text. Once the captions are created from the transcript, there is no longer word precise timing information. So a rule is needed (x percent of the text based on time, or characters per second, or whatever). Or the user must identify the split point, for example, execute the split from the text panel, which requires entering edit mode to show the word where the split should occur. But any of those methods require checking the point the spoken word actually occurs.

My description of the timecode where the split occurs was incomplete.

In the Text panel/captions tab, the selected caption segment is split in the middle when you use the split button or the “Split Caption” (text panel) shortcut.

In the timeline, the caption is split at the playhead, whether the caption is selected or not, if you click the split button in the Captions tab (even if a different caption is selected there) or you use the (unassigned by default) application shortcut to “Split Caption Segment Under Playhead.”

However, if you try to split a caption in the timeline so that one of the resulting segments would be less than about one second, it splits it in the middle.

Stan