Captions in Premiere Pro 13.1.2 have several problems.

(Windows10. May be different on Mac.). Here is a thread of all of the problems I've found in captions so far. While there are several threads already that point out individual issues, I'm hoping that bringing all of the issues together in a single mega thread will help get captions Adobe's prompt attention. Here we go!

1. NO BURN IN: Exporting a video through Media Encoder doesn't burn in captions even if the "Burn Captions Into Video" option is selected in Premiere Pro's Export Settings. The captions only get burned in if the video is exported directly through Premiere Pro.




2. DUPLICATES: If a captions file is duplicated in the project window, any changes done to the duplicate don't appear in the Program Monitor. In order to have changes appear, Premiere Pro needs to be restarted.




3. SELECT ALL: The Captions window is missing the standard CTRL-A keyboard shortcut to easily select all captions at once. This strange omission makes it unnecessarily difficult to select all the captions in a clip to make global appearance changes.




4. LEADING CONTROL: Captions need an easy way to control the space between lines, such as a Leading control that can work on individual captions, or all of the selected captions at once. (See illustration “Captions 1”) The current "Set Vertical Position (%)" option only works on a single caption at a time and requires the user to manually select the text in the second line. This takes far more time and effort than it should for something so simple.




5. DEFAULT LEADING: The default leading in captions is far too large and therefore ugly. The default leading between caption lines should be reduced to an aesthetically pleasing amount (See “Captions 2”)




6. KERNING CONTROL: The Captions window is also missing a way to control the spacing between characters in a caption. A Legacy Titler-style Kerning control is needed for Open captions.




7. MOTION SETTINGS: Copy/pasting the Motion settings of one captions clip to another in the Timeline does not work.




8. OFF-CENTER: By default, captions are off-center to the right by 5 pixels. When using captions in a narrow format video (1x1, 4x5, etc.) in which captions can stretch out to the edges of the frame, this error can become apparent. This incorrect centering can also become apparent in any sized video when captions line up with another title or graphic that’s centered on screen. (see “Captions 3”)




9. SPACING: If a two line caption is turned back into a single line, the space between the last character of the first line and the first character of the second line becomes incorrectly large. Even if characters are added or removed from the caption, the larger gap remains (see “Captions 4”)




10. MULTI-MOVING: It’s possible to select and even Shift-select multiple captions in a captions clip. So why isn’t it possible to do anything whatsoever with this selection? At the very least, Premiere Pro should let editors move a selection of captions up or down the captions clip for retiming purposes. Imagine having a video with 100 captions, only to have the client request that something be added or removed halfway into the video. This currently requires the editor to manually correct the timing of all captions beyond the change one by one… by one… by one… by one… This is sheer insanity and needs to be fixed ASAP!




11. BIGGER HANDLES: Captions and handles remain the same tiny size in the Timeline, no matter how much the video track is expanded. This makes it all too easy for users to accidentally move the captions clip itself when trying to retime a caption/handle. Captions and handles should grow accordingly when increasing the size of the video track they’re on. (see “Captions 5”)

Do you know of any captioning issues I missed? If so, please add them to the list!

Please vote and comment to help get Adobe’s attention on this matter!

In this day and age of Facebook/Instagram videos, open captioning has become a must. We need captioning tools that work properly asap!

It's 12:01AM and I would have been finished with my edit hours ago if it were not for the numerous bugs related to closed captions. I'll just list one here: edits in the captions are not reflected in the program monitor. I can create a new caption or change the timing of a caption, and it will not be shown when I play the video. I can delete words and the captions will not re-center themselves (okay, that's a separate bug, but worth mentioning here too). And sometimes the formatting is just completely wrong. The spacing will be too tight between lines and adjusting Line Spacing has no effect. These bugs have been in Premiere for years now from what I've read. Why are they not fixed by now?

(actually, open captions/subtitles...since, ironically, these captions are NOT adaptable to closed captions at present) Clicking on a Caption in the new (beta) timeline should align to the same caption in the Text | Captions window.
Currently, clicking on a caption in the Text | Captions window will automatically bring the CTI (cursor) to the correct caption in the timeline but it does NOT work the other way. One has to scroll through the entire Captions window to find the current caption (not impossible if one highlight/selects the caption in the timeline but it should really come up without having to scroll the entire caption collection!)

When working on captions, deselecting the captions clip in the Timeline (or selecting any other clip) makes all of the captions disappear from the Captions window. An empty Captions window is of zero benefit to editors and is an annoyance since it gives editors the added step of having to re-select the captions clip in the Timeline before they can continue to work on captioning.

My suggested solution is simple. Please always keep captions visible in the Captions window, whether the captions clip is currently selected in the Timeline or not. If the Timeline has 2 or more captions clips, keep the last selected captions clip visible until the editor manually selects another one, or one gets selected automatically through "Selection Follows Playhead".

For 11 more Caption issues (5 of which have already been fixed), take a look at this thread: https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/38080990-everything-wrong-with-captions-in-premiere-pro-13