Guide

How to create captions in Premiere Pro

Captions and subtitles aren't quite the same thing — captions typically include sound descriptions for accessibility. Here's how to set up a proper caption track in Premiere Pro, manually or automatically.

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Setting up a caption track

Premiere Pro has a dedicated caption track type, separate from a regular text layer, which is what caption-reading software and platforms like YouTube expect.

1️⃣

New Caption Track

Window → Text → New Caption Track, choosing a standard (like CEA-608) if closed-caption compliance matters for your delivery.

2️⃣

Fill it in

Type manually, or generate automatically with Adobe's Speech to Text (if your language is supported) or CaptionLab (for any of 99 languages).

3️⃣

Export or burn in

Export as a sidecar SRT/VTT file for platforms that support it, or burn captions directly into the video.

Captions for languages Adobe doesn't support

If your spoken language isn't one of Adobe's roughly 16 supported languages, Adobe's automatic captioning simply won't work — CaptionLab fills that gap using OpenAI's Whisper model, covering 99 languages, generating the same kind of editable caption track fully offline.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between captions and subtitles?
Subtitles typically translate or transcribe dialogue for viewers who can hear but don't understand the language. Captions (specifically closed captions) also describe relevant sound effects and speaker changes, for accessibility. Both are generated the same way technically in Premiere Pro.
Does CaptionLab generate accessibility-compliant closed captions?
CaptionLab generates accurate, timed SRT captions of spoken dialogue. It doesn't automatically add non-speech sound descriptions (like "[door slams]") — those still need to be added manually if full closed-caption accessibility compliance is required.
Can I style how captions look on screen?
Yes — once imported as a Premiere Pro caption track, styling (font, position, background) is controlled the same way as any other caption track in Premiere.

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