Using Adobe Premiere Pro Transcripts and Captions with Transcriptive (updated for Premiere 2022)

In this post we’ll go over how to use transcripts from Premiere’s Text panel with Transcriptive. This could be easier if Adobe exported the transcript with all the timecode data. We’ve asked them to do this but it will probably mean more coming from users. So please feel free to request that from them. Currently it’s not hard, but does require a couple more steps than it should.

Anyways, once you export the Adobe transcript, you’ll use Transcriptive’s Alignment feature to convert it! Easy and free.

Also, if you’re trying to get captions out of Transcriptive and into Premiere, you can do that with any version of Premiere. Since this is easy, just Export out of Transcriptive and Import in Premiere, I’ll cover it last.

Getting Transcripts from Adobe Sensei (Premiere’s Text panel) into Transcriptive

You can use either SRTs or Plain Text files to get the transcript into Transcriptive. Usually once the transcript is in Transcriptive you’ll want to run Alignment on it (which is free). This will sync the text up to the audio and give you per-word timecode. If you do this, exporting as a plain text file is better as you’ll be able to keep the speakers. (Adobe SRT export doesn’t support speakers)

However, SRTs have more frequent timestamps so if Alignment doesn’t work or you want to skip that step, SRTs are better. However, the per-word timecode may not be perfect as Transcriptive will need to interpolate between timestamps.

One advantage of SRTs is you can use Transcriptive Adobe Importer which will import the SRT and automatically align it. Making it a bit easier. But it’s not that big of a deal to manually run alignment. This does not support Text files.

Getting the transcript in Premiere

1. Open up the Text panel from the Window menu.

2. You should see three options, one of which is Transcribe Sequence

You can only transcribe sequences with Adobe’s service. If you want to transcribe individual clips, you’ll still need to use Transcriptive. (or get transcripts by dropping each one into a different sequence)

3. With your sequence selected, click the Transcribe Sequence button and Premiere will process it and return the transcript! (This can take a few minutes)

Exporting a Text File in Premiere 2022

Once the transcript is back, go to the menu in the upper, right corner and select Export to Text File. In Premiere 2022 you can do this with either Transcript or Captions selected. In 2021, this only works from Captions. (Export Transcript saves to a proprietary Adobe format that is not readable by third party plugins, so it has to be a Text File. )

Exporting a Text File in Premiere 2021

Step 1: In Premiere 2021, once the transcript is back, you need to turn it into captions. You can not export it from the Transcript tab as in Premiere 2022. So click the Caption button to convert the transcript into captions.

Step 2: Premiere will create the captions. From the Caption tab, you can export as SRT or Plain Text. Select ‘Export to text file’ and save the file.

Exporting SRTs in Premiere 2022 and 2021

It is basically the same as the steps above for exporting a Text file in Premiere 2021. In both 2022 and 2021 you need to turn the transcript into captions and then Export to SRT File from the Caption menu. (so in Step 2 above, do that instead of Export to Text File)

Note that in Premiere 2022 the ‘create captions’ button is the closed caption icon.

Back in Transcriptive Rough Cutter

1. Going back to Transcriptive, we can now import the Plain Text file. With your sequence or clip selected, click Transcriptive’s Import button and select the Plain Text file.

The settings in Import don’t really matter that much, unless you have Speakers. Since we’re going to use Alignment to get the per-word accurate timecode, the Import timecode settings are mostly moot.

That should bring the text into Transcriptive.

2. Click on the Transcribe Button. When the Transcribe dialog appears, select Alignment from the ‘Transcribe With’ dropdown. This is done offline and it’s free for English! There is an option to align using the A.I. services. However, those are not free. But if you want to align languages other than English that’s the only option currently.

3. Click OK… and Transcriptive will start processing the text and audio of the sequence, adding accurate timecode to the text, just as if you’d transcribed it from scratch!

So that’s how you get the Adobe transcription into Transcriptive!

(If Adobe had just added a feature to export the transcript with the timecode it already had in the Text panel… none of the above would be necessary. But here we are. So you should put in a feature request for that!)

Again, Adobe’s transcription service only works for sequences. So if you have a bunch of clips or media you want to transcribe, the easiest way is to use our Batch Transcribe function. And while Transcriptive’s transcription isn’t free, it’s only .04/min ($2.40/hr). However, as mentioned, you can drop each clip into a sequence and transcribe them individually that way. Once you’ve done that, you can use our Batch Alignment feature to get all the transcripts into Transcriptive!

Getting Captions from Transcriptive into Premiere’s Caption System

This is an easy one. You can export a variety of different caption formats from Transcriptive: SRT, MCC, SCC, EBL, SMPTE, and more.

1. Click the Export button in Transcriptive. From there you can select the caption format you want to use. SRT and SCC are the common ones.

2. Back in Premiere, Import the caption file into your project. Premiere will automatically recognize it as a caption file. When you drop it onto your sequence, it’ll automatically load into the Caption tab of Premiere’s Text panel.

Easy peasy. That’s all there is to it!

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