Premiere captions in the export

Where the captions went

• A sidecar file: the captions were saved as a separate file next to the video, not in it. YouTube can read that file; TikTok and Reels can't.
• Embedded captions: the captions travel inside the file as a track a player can switch on. Social apps generally don't show it.
• A hidden track: if the caption track's eye icon is off in the timeline, nothing from it is exported.
• The Media Encoder queue: on Adobe's community forum, editors report open captions that vanish when the export goes through the queue but appear when they export directly from Premiere.

Fix it in Premiere Pro

• In the timeline, check that the caption track's eye icon is on and that the captions belong to the sequence you export.
• Open Export, find the Captions settings and set them to Burn Captions Into Video.
• Export directly from Premiere instead of sending the job to the Media Encoder queue.
• If captions still go missing, restart Premiere, or nest the sequence and export the nest; both fixes come from the same forum thread.
• Watch the exported file in a separate player before uploading it anywhere.

Burning in turns every caption into pixels, so what you see in the Program Monitor is what viewers get. Keep a second export with a sidecar file if YouTube should also have a subtitle track.

Animated captions on their own track

For captions that can't get lost in a caption setting, make them outside Premiere and bring them in as video.

1. Export your edit, or just its audio, from Premiere and add it to the Cuecaps studio.
2. Click Find words, set the Language and correct any word in the transcript.
3. Pick a style. Word timing snaps to the audio, and Fix timing realigns any word you edit.
4. Export a Transparent MOV, put it on a video track above your edit from the first frame, and export as usual.

The overlay is ordinary video with an alpha channel, so Premiere exports it like any other clip, through Media Encoder or not. Match its frame rate and size to your sequence when you export it from Cuecaps.

Transparent export is part of the Creator and Pro plans. On a free account you can export the finished Video (MP4) with the captions burned in, which carries a small Made with cuecaps.com mark, and SRT and VTT downloads work on every plan.

Questions