Premiere Pro “Upgrade” No Longer Allows Closed Captions in Quicktime H.264

[Richard Clabaugh]

Just asking, Dave, what codecs are the preferred delivery file formats at your station for commercials from outside producers that are to be uploaded to traffic with embedded captions? A few years ago I used to hand deliver disks with ProRes files, but now all the outlets want uploads to traffic in H.264 or MPEG compressed formats with no side-car files and captions embedded. My only point here being, at least in my market, it still has it’s value professionally, even if it is an “out dated” format. It’s still very much in professional use and it’s death seems a bit premature.

[John Pale]

H.264 hasn’t been discontinued. You can still encode to H264 in an mp4 wrapper. Does that not work with captions? Its not part of my workflow, so I don’t actually know. If it works, but you need a .mov wrapper to meet spec, you can open the mp4 in QT Pro, then “Save As”. Apologies if this has been tried already.

[Travis Wyatt]

Hi Richard, were you able to resolve the issue of exporting video from Adobe Premier with closed captioning embedded into the file? I have only had to do this a few times and the last time (before the upgrade) I was able to export an H264 .mov which worked fine of course but now I have no idea what type of file I can export that will meet most broadcast station’s specs.
Thanks

[Imry Halevi]

I’m experiencing the exact same issue. So…when I create a new project in Premiere, add captions to it, and try to export it with embedded captions, I can only do it in “QuickTime” file format. And that format doesn’t support H.264 encoding. If I export the file in QuickTime ProRes, it has embedded captions that I can see in Premiere and QuickTime Player. But VLC player doesn’t see those captions.

A QuickTime file encoded in H.264 can have embedded captions, but then Premiere and QuickTime Player can’t see them.

Is there no way around this?

I need files that are 2-3 hours long, with embedded captions. I can’t use ProRes for that. The files would be far too large.

[Imry Halevi]

The problem is that the MP4/H.264 preset doesn’t allow for embedded captions in Premiere Export (or Import, for that matter). So I must use a Sidecar file, which is unfortunate.

[Richard Clabaugh]

I’ve developed a few work around methods to get the H.264 with embedded captions that I need to deliver to clients, but it’s in multiple steps. Also I’m working on 30 second commercials that I have to deliver via upload to stations that require Closed Captions embedded in an H.264 file for upload. They don’t take sidecars and ProRes is too big to upload so not accepted.

For you the size of the material may be an issue, but here’s what I do.

First – Edit and do your captions as normal in your current version of Premiere Pro, then Export as a Quicktime ProRes file with the captions embedded for use an an intermediate master.

Once I’ve done that there are two ways I can get a final H.264 with captions.

Method 1
Step 1 – An older copy of Premiere Pro: I have an OLD copy of Premiere Pro in which I can open the exported ProRes file. While the old version will not open a newer Premiere Pro project file, it will open a ProRes file as that format has not changed.

Step 2 – From that program, I can still export an H.264 with embedded closed captions, so once I have that file open, I export the H.264 just like I used to.

I have two machines, one of which I keep the older Premiere Pro on, but if you have only one machine you can still do this by downloading an older version of Premiere Pro (it’s an option you have to dig for but it’s there in the subscription) and run that version only when you need to do this step.

This works on Mac or PC and requires no additional spending.

Method 2 – if working on a Mac:

A little bit of money (not a lot) but easier…

I downloaded Apple’s “Compressor” software ($50) and use that to convert the ProRes intermediate file to an H.264 with embedded captions. It’s one a single step and that’s pretty much all I use Compressor for, but it’s easier than working between two machines or keeping two versions of Premiere Pro installed.

Alternate: I you don’t want to work in ProRes – I believe you can marry a sidecar file to a video file in Compressor and export that way, which keeps you from having to make a large ProRes intermediate, but may result in a little loss of video quality as you re-compress H.264.

Yes, all of these are a pain in the butt and a stupid set of work arounds that should be unnecessary, but that’s what I’m doing to deliver the commercials I do for broadcast with embdded closed captions as I am required to do for the jobs I have.

I don’t understand why Adobe removed this feature from their products. I assume they must have to pay a license fee and decided it wasn’t worth it for most people, but it’s a major inconvenience for me as a working broadcast professional.

Sorry I don’t have a better method. If others do, I’m eager to hear it.

[Imry Halevi]

Thanks! This is very helpful.

If I have a H.264 file with captions already embedded in it, how would you recommend I get it into Premiere? I can’t seem to covert H.264+captions to ProRes+captions in Compressor. Do you know of another tool that can do that, or that can de-embed the captions into a SRT file?

[Imry Halevi]

It’s less about EXPORT, and more about IMPORT.
It’s a pain to import H.264 files with embedded captions.