Premiere Pro auto captions come from Speech to Text, which is built into the app. If you edit in Premiere, caption in Premiere. The captions sit on a real track in your sequence, and they export in broadcast formats that browser tools don't touch. The steps below follow Adobe's help pages as of October 2026. Adobe's newer help calls the app just "Premiere", and it moves buttons between versions, so if something on your screen is labeled a little differently, look for the nearest match.
Here's how to create captions in Premiere Pro from start to finish: install the language, transcribe, turn the transcript into captions, style them, and export.
Before you start: language packs
English ships with Premiere. For any other language, download the pack first, or transcription won't offer it. Per Adobe's language pack guide: open Window > Text, start a transcript from the Transcript tab, open the Language dropdown and click the download icon next to the language you need. When the icon disappears, it's installed. The full list is on Adobe's supported languages page.
Adobe's advice is to create captions when you're almost done editing, and it's worth following. Cut the sequence after the captions exist and you'll be fixing caption segments by hand.
Step 1: transcribe with Speech to Text
- Open your sequence and go to Window > Text.
- In the Transcript tab, select the options icon and choose Generate static transcript to open the transcription settings. (If you don't need to change anything, Transcribe sequence starts right away.)
- Set the Language. Turn Speaker labeling on if more than one person talks.
- Under Audio analysis, choose clips tagged as Dialogue or a specific audio track. Pick the voice track, not the music.
- Select Transcribe.
Read the transcript before you make captions from it. Fixing a misheard name here fixes it everywhere, and Premiere has find and replace in the Transcript tab. Adobe's Speech to Text page also covers transcribing only between In and Out points, which helps when you're adding a new section to an already transcribed edit.
Step 2: create captions and set the line length
Switch to Window > Workspaces > Captions and Graphics, then choose Create captions from transcript (in the Captions tab of the Text panel, or the Create captions icon at the top of the Transcript tab). The Create captions dialog has the settings that matter:
- Caption preset: Subtitle default suits most videos.
- Format: plain subtitles for the web, or broadcast formats such as CEA-608 and CEA-708 when a network asks for them.
- Style: a caption style you saved earlier.
- Length, duration and gap: maximum characters per line, how long each caption stays on screen, and the gap between captions.
- Lines: single or double.
Our defaults: for a landscape video, around 42 characters and two lines, which is the common subtitle convention. For vertical video, drop to about 20 characters and one line so the text stays in the middle of the frame. For the one-word-at-a-time look, expand Captioning Preferences and set Layout to Single Word, as described in Adobe's single word captions guide. Our guide to word-by-word captions covers when that style helps and when it just gets in the way.
Select Create captions and a caption track appears above your video, lined up with the dialogue.
Step 3: style the captions with track styles
Select a caption on the timeline and use the Properties panel: font and size, Fill for color, Stroke for an outline, Shadow, and alignment. Then save it so every caption matches. Per Adobe's caption styles page, click the plus icon at the upper right of the Track style menu, choose Create style, name it and save it either to the project or to Local styles (which you can reuse in later projects).
If you tweak one caption and want the change everywhere, use the Redefine style icon in the Properties panel and pick All captions on track.
Step 4: export a sidecar SRT or burn the captions in
Open Export from the header bar. The export settings have a Captions section, and Adobe's caption export page lists the options:
| Option | What you get | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Burn in captions | Text drawn into the picture, always visible | TikTok, Reels, Shorts, anything that autoplays muted |
| Sidecar file (.srt) | A separate subtitle file next to the video | YouTube, Vimeo, course platforms, where viewers toggle CC |
| Sidecar (.scc, .mcc, .xml, .stl) | Broadcast caption files | TV and delivery specs |
| Embed in output file | CEA-608, CEA-708 or OP-47 inside the file | Broadcast masters |
An SRT holds one caption track per file, so export one per language. If you only need the text, skip the render: in the Text panel's Captions tab, the ellipsis menu has Export with SRT, TXT and CSV options (Adobe's steps). Not sure which way to deliver? Our explainer on open and closed captions walks through the trade-off.
Premiere can also translate captions into a new track. Adobe says this runs through a cloud service using Google Translate and Microsoft Translator, so check the result with a fluent speaker before you publish.
When a free browser tool is quicker
Premiere is the better tool for real editing work. It has speaker labels, translation, broadcast caption formats, and captions that live inside the project you're already cutting. We don't do any of those.
But opening Premiere for a single caption job is a lot of setup. Our auto captions tool is faster when:
- The clip is already exported and you just need captions on it.
- You don't have a Creative Cloud subscription, or you're on a computer without Premiere installed.
- You need an SRT for YouTube and nothing else. Our SRT generator opens straight on the file export.
You open the video in the browser, which sends a small audio track for transcription (the video itself stays on your computer). Fix the lines, pick a style, and download SRT, VTT, TXT or an MP4 with the captions burned in. There's no account and no watermark.