Working with captions in Premiere Pro 14.x and earlier

 This document describes the captions tools in Premiere Pro v. 14.x and earlier. For new projects we recommend using the new captions workflow in Premiere Pro 15.0 and later.

Premiere Pro 14.x and earlier versions include captioning tools that that allow you to create, edit, and export captions with your videos.

You can import and display closed captions. You can also edit the text, color, background, and the timing. Once you are done editing, you can export the closed captions files as a "sidecar" file, embed them in a QuickTime movie or MXF file, or burn the captions into a video. 

Premiere Pro also supports importing open caption files that can be burnt in as subtitles.

Create or edit captions

Create captions

You can create captions in Premiere Pro. You can add text, apply formatting, and specify position and color. For more information, see Add and edit subtitles and captions.

Add text to captions

Import and display captions

You can import files that have closed captions embedded in them, or closed caption "sidecar" files. You can import the files into your project by doing one of the following:

• Select File > Import to import embedded caption files or caption "sidecar" files.
• Import through the Media Browser using the file's context menu.

Display captions in the Source Monitor and Program Monitor

When you import caption clips into a project, the captions are displayed as caption blocks in the Captions panel.

To display the captions in the Source or Program Monitor, do one of the following:

Important notes

• You can toggle captions display on and off.
• You can select the captioning standard for a caption clip loaded in the Source Monitor. In the Source or Program Monitor, click the wrench icon and select Closed Captions Display > Settings. For example, you can select CEA-608 or CEA-708 closed captioning standards, and set the stream you want to display.
  
• A caption clip when linked to video behaves similar to a linked audio channel clip. The text clip is represented in the Timeline's source indicators, and can be enabled/disabled or linked to any video track like other video clips.
• The caption blocks in a caption clip are visible, along with End Of Caption (EOC) indicators that denote where the caption blocks begin and end.

Edit captions

Consider a scenario where you have a program that already contains closed captions. You may need to create a different version of the program, with a shorter duration.

To edit a caption file, do the following:

Export captions

After you finish creating and editing caption files, you can export the sequence containing the captions through Premiere Pro or Adobe Media Encoder using the Export Settings dialog box. You can also export the sequence containing captions to tape using third-party hardware that supports closed caption encoding.

Set default export settings for caption

You can define default settings for export by customizing the settings of a caption before you export it. They are used as defaults in the Captions tab of the Export Settings dialog box, under the option Create Sidecar File. You can overwrite them during export if you want to.

To set default export settings for a caption file, follow these steps:

Export captions using Premiere Pro or Adobe Media encoder

Handle embedded captions

Premiere Pro supports importing and decoding embedded captions in MOV and MXF files.

Importing media with embedded captions

You can import media containing embedded captions just like you would import any other media by selecting File > Import or by importing through the Media Browser. Premiere Pro imports the embedded closed caption data automatically into the project.   

For example, when you import a QuickTime clip that contains embedded captions, the captions are automatically imported. If a QuickTime clip has an accompanying "sidecar" caption file, then import the "sidecar" file just like you import any other file.

To detect and automatically import embedded caption data in a media file, select the Include Captions On Import check box under the Media section in the Preferences dialog box.

Editing embedded captions

To edit an embedded caption file in Premiere Pro, follow the same steps as you do to create a separate caption file. When you edit an embedded caption file, the edits are applied only within the project and the source file is not modified.

Exporting media with embedded captions

While exporting, you can choose to keep the captions embedded or split the captions into a separate sidecar file.

• To export only the captions as a separate sidecar file, select the caption file in the Project panel, and choose File > Export > Captions.
  
• To export media with embedded captions, select the target sequence selected in the Timeline, and choose File > Export > Media. Premiere Pro opens the Export Settings dialog box.
• In the Export Settings dialog box, select the Format as either QuickTime or MXF. In the Captions tab, select the Export Options as Embed In Output File.

Handle burned-in captions

Premiere Pro lets you burn in permanent captions into your video. It supports burning in both closed captions and open captions while exporting your video. Burned-in captions are always visible regardless of whether closed captioning is enabled on streaming device or not.

When you import SRT files and XML files that  have open caption data in them, Premiere Pro automatically converts these files to CEA-708 CC1 closed caption files. You can then edit these files and burn in the captions as subtitles while exporting using Premiere Pro or Adobe Media Encoder.

Create captions using third-party applications

If you are using any third-party captioning applications to create captions, here is a typical workflow that you can follow:

Step 1: Export the sequence to a third-party captioning application

After you complete the video and audio editing in Premiere Pro, you export the sequence as a reference movie to a third-party Captioning application.

This movie can be sent to a Captioning service bureau or a Captioning specialist, where the movie is used as a reference to create a closed caption track from scratch. A third-party captioning application, like MacCaption from CPC, lets you create the closed caption track from scratch, and then encodes the closed captioning data in the necessary format.

Step 2: Import closed caption files into Premiere Pro

Once you receive the Closed Caption file from a third-party Captioning application, you can import the file into your project in Premiere Pro. Premiere Pro supports importing Closed Captioning files in .mcc, .scc, .xml, or .stl filename formats.

When you import a Closed Caption sidecar file into your project, a video-only clip is created containing the Closed Caption text blocks. You can make any further adjustments to the text blocks to keep it in sync with your media, as required.

A Closed Caption sidecar file contains multiple caption streams: for example, CC1, CC2. When such a clip containing multiple caption streams is added to a sequence, the Timeline shows separate track items for each stream. To switch among different caption streams, in the Captions tab, select a stream from the Caption Stream pop-up menu.

Step 3: Export the edited video

Once the closed captions are in sync with the media, you can export the edited video along with the Closed Caption file. You can export closed caption sidecar files and embedded QuickTime movies (QuickTime 608 captions) through Premiere Pro, and Adobe Media Encoder.

Supported formats

Closed captioning

Premiere Pro supports embedding into and decoding from the following file formats:  

• MOV
• DNxHD MXF Op1a
• MXF Op1a

Open captioning

Premiere Pro allows editors to create Open Captions, also known as subtitles, which are captions burned into the video stream (as opposed to Closed Captions which can be toggled on or off by the viewer). Users can create Open Captions or import caption formatted XML and SRT files. In the Captions panel, you can create caption blocks, add text, and change the text formatting (color, size, position, and background color).

You can convert single stream sidecar and embedded single stream files to Open Caption in Premiere Pro. It includes embedded MOV and MXF caption files. Using the value area next to Size you can make changes by mouse-down right/left interaction, or numerical input.

Using EBU N19 Subtitles

If you're exporting a video that contains Teletext or Open Subtitling captions, you could set the metadata to sidecar .stl files so that the created sidecar file contains the wanted information.