Multiple caption tracks visible for accessibility
In the previous version of Premiere Pro, I was able to add multiple captions and make them visible in order to have English/Spanish on screen. But in the latest version (Version 15.0.0) only one track of captioning is available.
This makes it hard for those of us who are working on making our videos accessible to multiple audiences. Please bring back the ability to have multiple tracks of captioning visible at the same time.
Jp Avila
shared this idea
This is not a bug, it’s as designed. We specifically limit the visibility to one track at a time to avoid accidentally burning in multiple tracks. Also, when exporting to a format that only supports one captions stream like SRT or STL, we need to know which is the active track in order to export the correct track.
But I understand why you might need two tracks visible at the same time.
Multiple speakers:
If we could automatically identify speakers and designate a style associated with them, would that help? For example speaker 1 is blue and on the left, speaker 2 is yellow and on the right?
Multiple languages:
Do you ever need to burn in both at the same time or is it just a matter of being able to see both to aid in translation and alignment?
Thanks for the feedback, we really are listening :)
67 comments
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Simba Wu
commented
This is fxxking stupid and still not fixed in the latest version!
"it's as designed", how arrogant is that!! are you american that only speaks one language hmm? that's probably you don't listen to all your users! frustrating! "needs more info" really?? apparently you guys just don't give a **** to us.GIVE OUR MULTIPLE SUBTITLE TRACKS VISIBILITY BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Simba Wu
commented
This is fxxking stupid and still not fixed in the latest version!
"it's as designed", how arrogant is that!! are you american that only speaks one language hmm? that's probably why you don't understand and don't give a shit and don't listen to all your users over the world! frustrating!GIVE OUR MULTIPLE TRACKS VISIBILITY BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!
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John Haviland
commented
I also noted the new updated Premiere (which, in fact, arrived on my system a couple of nights ago when I was in the midst of working on a Premiere project--during the update there was some paralyzed functionality having to do with exporting to Media Encoder, so as a result I had to scuttle the job and restart after the update). I hoped that our issues with multiple caption tracks would have been addressed, but Chris Long is right: they were not. Selecting one caption track for display continues to disable all others.
Even if Adobe plans to continue to develop tools for single caption tracks and expanded capacity (including voice recognition "enhancements" which in my opinion will help almost only the monoglot English caption-editors out there), it is unclear to me why the code that produces, formats, and allows burning single caption tracks cannot fairly easily be recycled recursively to allow multiple caption tracks, with all the sorts of uses that have repeatedly been mentioned on this thread. This should be a relatively simple programming task, with the existing interface, just allowing what Premiere now does NOT allow, namely selecting multiple caption tracks for coding in the same project.
Some response from Adobe would be appreciated.
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Chris Long
commented
So I see that Premiere has been upadated to v15.4. Any news as whether this is sorted in it? The new features list suggests some developments in the captions area, but nothing explicit about this problem.
is ANYONE from Adobe listening??? Is there no information available??
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Danny
commented
So many people are waiting on this fix Adobe!
Please talk to your users before removing functionality like this. -
Robert Miller
commented
Color coding various speakers would be great! Something like Matthew Ross mentioned below would be a great way to do things as well.
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Daniel Lee
commented
Still waiting for this to be fixed
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Eko Wardoyo
commented
I'm so frustating with this limitation, for now, the solution is i have created another sequence for second subtitle. :(
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GARETH ALLEN
commented
I am producing an ongoing installation which is updated with new content constantly - I needs to have captions in multiple places, its projected in a 10 meter room and we need to display captions on two walls, which was fine until the recent caption tool update, so I would like to have the ability to see two streams or more. Or is there a work around.
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Matthew Ross
commented
Would be really useful if we can get an update on this Francis or anyone at Adobe, have a multitude of projects on the go where this captions workflow could be used if there is an update.
Either having the ability to convert the Captions track to a video layer, or to convert to xml like these guys do - https://www.subtitletools.net/subtitle2xml would eliminate many of the problems we are facing.
Also means you don't actually have to add in any new features to the original captions - just means we can position and alter text and how many speakers we can view on screen at any given time.
These limitations of broadcast spec really hinders editors who are trying to use them for 1x1 and 9x16 versioning, and by the sounds of all the comments - in many other ways too.
I think I speak on behalf of everyone by pleading that you add this functionality into a new update.
Many thanks,
Matty
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Daniela Rupolo
commented
Truly the least accessible and most infuriating update. Did it not occur to the people making this decision that burning in multiple tracks is a very common choice for multilingual institutions?
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Chris Long
commented
Pierre I absolutely agree, and will have to consider 'subtitletools' if it’s not changed (thanks Matty).
Also subtitletools will, I think, resolve the safety area problem too - another crazy thing where Adobe apparently don't understand that broadcast isn't the only game in town...
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Pierre Louis Beranek
commented
I'm curious why this is still marked as "Needs More Info" two and a half months later. Francis Crossman, you ended your message with "we really are listening", but actions speak much louder than words. This seems like something that could be fixed relatively easily. Will it be another few weeks before it's fixed, or a few years?
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Matthew Ross
commented
Would the simplest thing not be just to have the functionality to be able to convert the captions tracks to video tracks so we can use effects controls and have more flexibility about how we use the captions? For those like me trying to replicate the in house text styles of certain companies we are limited in where we can position the text etc.
These chaps have come up with this ability which I think would be super super handy if a similar option could be added:
https://www.subtitletools.net/subtitle2xml
Please please consider it! Would save so much time rather than nesting workarounds
Thanks,
Matty
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Josh Gibson
commented
Another +1 from me as well for this. At the organization I work at, we want to have *both* English and Spanish captions burned into the video (both visible at the same time) so it'd be great to have this feature.
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John Haviland
commented
Sorry, I should have looked at my own logs. Here is the link to Stan Jones' post on the subject of nesting:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/faq-workaround-nesting-to-apply-effect-controls-to-caption-track/td-p/11935335 -
John Haviland
commented
Briefly, I will just remind others who continue (rightly) to complain about the recent versions of Premiere having crippled the ability to add multiple simultaneous captioning tracks, that the "nesting" technique Danny mentions below can still be used as a workaround, and it does allow you to set up multiple simultaneous caption tracks in the most logical way (i.e., all together)--hopefully meaning that when Adobe finally makes up its mind to restore this functionality (as I should have thought they would have done months ago) the projects in question should work correctly. It might be useful for Danny, or whoever originally figured out the workaround, to post slightly more transparent instructions on how to use "nesting" in series to achieve the desired results. I had to go back to the drawing board to work it out for myself, and someone may have come up with a slightly less awkward solution than the procedure I have adopted. One of my own desiderate was, hopefully, to try to keep my original project files "forward compatible"--i.e., in a form where some ultimate resolution of the Adobe-induced limitation to "one-caption line-at-a-time" burning will still be able to read the project file.
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Chris Long
commented
Is anyone at Adobe across this?
Can someone give us the status of our request? I'm holding off finding another solution on the off chance this is sorted - basically when Adobe stops keeping 14.x available I will have to move.
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Naser Dashti
commented
I have the same issue. I create videos for social media with two languages burned into the video for easy viewing (English and Persian).
Thank you for making captions simpler to use, but please allow for multiple active tracks. -
Juliana Machado
commented
I am currently having the same problem. I'm working on a project that has captions in both English and Te Reo Māori burned on the video, so I had to go back to Premiere 2020 to work on it.
I understand this is not usual practice for TV and Film, but it does happen with web videos. This project for example is focused on accessibility, so it has 2 languages with captions and NZ Sign Language.
I usually just use essential graphics with burned subtitles videos anyway, because captions in Premiere is just a nightmare to work with. But for this project in particular I was supplied with .srt files and it was just easier to deal with captions, till Premiere updated.