How to Add Captions in Premiere Pro: 3 Methods

Three ways to caption a sequence in Premiere Pro, how to style captions once rather than one by one, and the export choice that decides whether your captions are burned in or selectable.

Premiere Pro offers three routes to captions. Transcribe the sequence and convert the transcript into a caption track, create an empty caption track and type them yourself, or import an existing SRT file. Transcribing is fastest for spoken content, importing is fastest when a caption file already exists.

The useful question is not "how do I make captions?" It is "do these captions need to be selectable or burned into the picture?" That single decision changes your export settings, and getting it wrong means re-exporting the whole sequence.

Method 1: transcribe the sequence

This is the fastest route for anything with speech, and it is the one most people should use.

1. Open the Text panel from the Window menu.
2. Select the Captions tab, then choose Transcribe Sequence.
3. Pick the audio track that contains the dialogue from the dropdown. If your sequence has music on a separate track, exclude it here rather than cleaning it up afterwards.
4. Start the transcription and wait. Length depends on the sequence and your machine.
5. When the transcript appears, choose Create Captions, confirm Create captions from transcription, and create.

A caption track appears at the top of the timeline with the text already timed to the dialogue.

Correct the text before you style it. Automatic transcription reliably mangles proper nouns, product names and numbers, and fixing them after styling means redoing work. Read the whole thing once in the Text panel, which is faster than scrubbing the timeline.

Method 2: create a caption track manually

Use this when there is little dialogue, when the audio is too poor to transcribe, or when the captions are describing something rather than repeating speech.

1. In the Captions tab, choose Create new caption track.
2. Select Subtitle as the type, then confirm.
3. With the playhead where the caption should start, click the plus icon to add a caption line.
4. Type the text, then drag the caption block in the timeline to align it with the audio.
5. Repeat through the sequence.

Slow, and completely accurate. For a two minute piece it is often quicker than correcting a transcription.

Method 3: import an SRT file

Use this when captions already exist, whether from a transcription service, another editor or a previous version of the edit.

1. In the Captions tab, choose Import captions from file.
2. Select the .srt file and open it.

Premiere places the captions on a new track, timed by the timecode inside the file.

The timing will be wrong if the file came from a different cut. An SRT is timed against the version it was made from, so any trim you have made since shifts everything after it. Generate the SRT from the final cut, or expect to re-time every caption after the first change.

Style them once, not one at a time

The mistake that costs the most time is styling captions individually.

Select every caption in the track, then adjust font, weight, size, colour and background in the Essential Graphics panel. Applied to a selection, the change lands on all of them at once.

Four things worth setting deliberately.

Size for the smallest screen. Captions that read comfortably on your monitor are frequently unreadable on a phone. Check at actual playback size before you commit.

Add a background or a stroke. Plain white text disappears against bright footage. A semi transparent box or a thin dark outline keeps it legible over anything.

Keep lines short. Two lines maximum, and break on natural phrases rather than at the edge of the box. A caption that splits a name across two lines reads badly, and the same applies to the clips cut from the sequence, as covered in how to make shareable podcast clips for social media.

Stay out of the lower third and the edges. Platform interface elements sit there, and a caption underneath a progress bar is a caption nobody reads. The safe area differs by platform, and the treatment side of it is covered in caption styles for B2B and B2C platforms.

Caption treatment by audience and platform is covered in caption styles for B2B and B2C platforms.

Export: burned in or selectable

This is the decision that determines the export settings, and it is worth making before you start.

Burned in captions are part of the picture. They always display, they cannot be turned off, and they cannot be translated or searched. This is what social platforms need, because most feed playback is muted and many platforms do not reliably display a separate caption track.

Selectable captions travel as a sidecar file or an embedded track. Viewers can turn them on or off, they are searchable and translatable, and they are the accessibility standard for broadcast and web players.

In the export dialogue, the Captions section controls this. Choosing to burn captions into the video writes them into the picture. Choosing to create a sidecar file produces an SRT alongside the video. Exporting with neither selected produces a video with no captions at all, which is the most common version of this mistake.

For social clips, burn them in. For a player that supports it, export the sidecar as well, since it costs nothing and covers both cases.

Worked example: an eight clip batch

This is an invented example, not measured data.

A producer has eight clips cut from one interview, each between thirty and fifty seconds, all destined for LinkedIn and Shorts.

Captioning each clip separately means eight transcriptions, eight rounds of correction and eight styling passes, and the styling drifts between them because nobody matches settings by memory across a morning.

Captioning the full interview once before cutting means one transcription, one correction pass over the proper nouns, and one styling decision. The eight clips inherit correct, consistently styled captions because they are cut from a captioned master.

The ordering is the whole lesson. Caption the source, then cut, rather than cutting and captioning eight times.

Where Montage fits

Montage is not an editor and does not replace Premiere. It does not grade, it does not composite, it does not do timeline work, and it will not style captions to a brand specification.

What it does is take a long recording and return the moments worth publishing. Upload up to 20GB at 4K and it gives you 8 to 10 scored clip candidates rather than an unranked pile, each trimmable by editing transcript text, with branded captions and vertical reframing applied, exporting as MP4 for social or as XML for Premiere.

That XML export is the relevant part here. It hands Premiere a timeline with the cuts already made, so the caption and finishing work happens on a sequence rather than on eight separately assembled clips. The handoff is described in how XML export solves the producer and editor handoff problem, and the transcript based trimming approach in text based video editing.

If Final Cut rather than Premiere is where you finish, the tools for that workflow are compared in the best AI clip makers for Final Cut Pro editors.

Limitations and troubleshooting

Transcribe Sequence is greyed out. No audio track is selected, or the sequence has no audio attached. Check the dropdown lists the track your dialogue actually sits on.

The transcription keeps misspelling a name. Expected. Correct it in the Text panel rather than the timeline, and keep a list of recurring terms for your show so the same fixes are quick each time.

Captions are out of sync after an edit. They were generated before the trim. Regenerate from the final cut, because re-timing an entire track by hand costs more than transcribing again.

Styling one caption changed only that caption. You did not select the whole track. Select all captions first, then apply the style.

The exported video has no captions. Neither burn in nor sidecar was selected in the export dialogue. Both default to off.

Captions look fine in Premiere and unreadable on a phone. You judged them at monitor size. Check at actual playback size, and add a background if the footage behind them is bright.

Frequently asked questions

How do you add captions in Premiere Pro?

Open the Text panel, choose the Captions tab, then either transcribe the sequence and convert the transcript into captions, create an empty caption track and type them, or import an existing SRT file.

Can Premiere Pro generate captions automatically?

Yes. Transcribe Sequence produces a transcript from the audio, and that transcript converts into a timed caption track. Expect to correct proper nouns and numbers afterwards.

How do you import an SRT into Premiere Pro?

In the Captions tab, choose Import captions from file and select the SRT. The captions are placed on a new track and timed by the timecode inside the file, so the file must match your final cut.

How do you burn captions into a video in Premiere Pro?

In the export dialogue, use the Captions section and choose to burn them into the video. Exporting without selecting either burn in or a sidecar file produces a video with no captions at all.

Should social clips use burned in captions?

Yes. Most feed playback is muted and several platforms do not reliably display a separate caption track, so burning them in is the only way to guarantee they appear.

Does Montage add captions in Premiere?

No. Montage applies branded captions to the clips it produces, and exports XML so Premiere receives a timeline with the cuts already made. Timeline styling and finishing remain Premiere's job.