Captions in Premiere Pro

How to Add Captions on Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017?

In layman terms, captions are also known as subtitles.

It’s the text in the bottom of the screen spelling out the spoken words.

There are two types of captions.

• Closed captions
• Open captions

Closed captions can be turned on or off by the viewer.

Open captions are always visible or “burned” on the video.

Follow these steps add captions on Adobe Premiere Pro (For advanced users).

1. Open a sequence with voice overs or dialogs.
2. Go to the bottom of the Project panel and click on the New Item icon.
3. Choose “Captions…”.
4. On the New Captions dialog box, click OK.
5. Specify Captions Standard. Choose CEA-708 for HD Closed caption. Choose Open Captions for open captions. Let’s choose Open Captions and click OK.
6. From the Project panel, drag the captions into a higher track in the Timeline.
7. Reveal the Captions edit panel by going to the main menu on top and select Windows > Captions.
8. Type or copy and paste the text into the Captions panel.
9. For open captions, you can adjust the fonts type, size, color, position, background, and outline.
10. To add another caption, extend the caption clip in the Timeline by dragging the top right corner.
11. Click the “+” in the bottom of the Captions panel.
12. A new caption item appears right next to the previous one in the Timeline.
13. Again, type or copy and paste the text into the Captions panel.
14. In the Timeline, adjust the caption’s position and duration.
15. Repeat from step 10.

For closed captions, repeat the steps but at step 5, select CEA-708.

If you cannot see the closed captions on the program monitor, click on the spanner icon.

• Enable Closed Captions Display
• Change Settings to CEA-708

How to export closed captions as an SRT file from Adobe Premiere Pro?

• Select File > Export > Media.
• In the Export Settings dialog box, go to the Captions tab.
• In the Export Options, select Create Sidecar File.
• From the File Format, select SubRip Subtitle Format (.srt).
• Click Export.

Do you need to create captions or subtitles for your video?

Video tutorial coming soon here…

Captions in Premiere Pro

Adrian Lee
VIDEOLANE.COM