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.


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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. -
Solene Cotten commented
I am currently working on a short film with multiple languages and it will be very appreciable to burn all of subtitles in the same caption like earlier.
Instead of modify just one word (italic, color and size) as I often have to do in commercial.
Thank you -
Tricia Creason-Valencia commented
Deeply problematic for many of our bilingual projects (Spanish and English) including our current one featuring opera singers whose voices overlap while singing. Please fix this!
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T. Williams commented
Our company does anime subtitling and our workflow is stuck on Final Cut 7. Adobe's design choice to prohibit multiple subtitle tracks means that we're stuck on FCP7 that much longer.
Our use-case is that we not only need to subtitle spoken dialogue, but also any incidental on-screen kanji text pertinent to the story (such as a classroom chalkboard, a road sign, a book cover, etc). Many of our clients' shows are heavy on such. We place spoken dialogue at the bottom of the screen, and the subtitle for the on-screen text appears at the top of the screen simultaneously.
On a related note, it would also be a MASSIVE boon if Adobe could provide a subtitle export format that includes a subtitle's position. SRT does not. This is extra important to us because (in addition to the above example) our clients also require us to reposition subtitles in close-up shots so that the text doesn't obscure the face or lips of the character speaking. I would suggest implementing TTML export since that is a well adopted W3C standard by now (Premiere 2020 even used something close to that within the .prproj files). And the position data doesn't need to be pixel perfect, just the basic nine-square positions is good enough.
In the meantime, our entire company remains stuck on a 12-yr old NLE because it's the only thing we've found that can do overlapping subtitles and export to a format that preserves positioning.
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Jemma Byrne commented
I work with 9 languages. Would be really nice to be able to do a sidecar export of all my languages as an SRT at once instead of having to go back and export everything individually.
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Gris wald commented
"avoid accidentally burning in multiple tracks" really? Sorry I thought PremierePro was a professional program made for professionals who can manage more than one track and decide what to render. We need multiple caption tracks for many reasons as other fellows comment. Multiple lenguajes burned in, multiple speakers, align different captions to the frame... and because I'm a professional and I think I can handle it, thank you
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Francine Ferraro Rothkopf commented
Ditto on multiple language, multiple speakers, and adding multiple still formats that need captions... Fortunately for me I'm still completing the final project in iMovie, so I exported it three times with three different caption Styles, and then spliced it together. Frustating.
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Seth Agli commented
Just started using Premiere and this is currently what's holding me up. How has this not been fixed yet lmfao.
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David Miguel Yela commented
This is really frustrating, I can't understand why you should decide for us after it was possible in the version before.
Multiple subtitles are necessary for multiple languages. For example in Switzerland english speaking movies are subtitled in french and german. -
Alexander Landström commented
Really frustrating after creating two tracks and realising you can't export both. Need to deliver for a client today...
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Thomas Crausaz commented
I second that, I want to make that choice when I need to. Thank you