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Add Animated Caption Effects

Learn how to apply animated caption effects to your video in Premiere Assistant using preset or custom styles.

Written by Nandita Kothari

Add animated caption effects to your video using preset styles or a custom design you build yourself.

Premiere Assistant gives you two ways to add animated caption effects:

  • From the Captions panel (after you've already transcribed and generated captions)

  • From the Animated captions panel (for short clips, no prior transcription needed)

Option 1: Apply from the Captions Panel

  1. In the Captions panel, generate your captions. See Generate Captions for Your Video if you haven't done this yet.

  2. Click [Apply to sequence] > [Animated captions] > [Next].

  3. The Animated captions panel opens alongside your transcript.

  4. Choose a preset from the Preset section, or scroll down to Custom and click [+] to create your own.

  5. The panel auto-selects a caption for preview. To change it, open the Preview text dropdown.

  6. Configure your settings across the four tabs. See Animated Captions Settings below.

  7. Click [Apply].

Option 2: Apply from the Animated Captions panel

Use this for short clips (up to 10 seconds) when you haven't transcribed the video yet.

  1. In Premiere Assistant, click [Animated captions] from the panel menu.

  2. Choose a preset, or scroll down to Custom and click [+] to create your own.

  3. A prompt appears: "Select a short clip to add depth effect." Up to 10 seconds of video is supported for this method.

  4. In your Premiere timeline, cut and select the clip you want to apply the effect to. The button changes to [I've selected a short clip].

  5. Click [I've selected a short clip]. The clip is transcribed and the Animated captions panel opens.

  6. The preview section is auto-selected. Change it using the Preview text dropdown if needed.

  7. Configure your settings, then click [Apply].

Animated Captions settings

The settings panel has four tabs.

General

  • Preview text: choose which caption line to preview

  • [Preview text in current frame]: see the effect applied to your current frame

  • Shortform screen guide: toggle on when editing vertical short-form videos to see a layout guide overlay

  • Position: set where captions appear on screen using X/Y values or the visual picker

  • Padding: adjust the left and right padding around your captions

  • Scale: resize the captions

  • Long sentence: choose how to handle long lines: Scale to fit, Multi-line, or Actual size

Caption

These are the same caption format settings as in the Captions panel. Learn more in Generate Captions for Your Video.

  • Max length per line: Letter count or Word count, with a slider

  • Punctuation breaks: Period/full stop, Comma, Question, Exclamation (toggles)

  • Multi-line (up to 2 lines): toggle

  • Lettercase: As Typed, Uppercase, Lowercase, or Titlecase

  • Silent section: Sustain caption

Style

Three text states you can style independently:

  • Spoken: the word that has already been said

  • Default: words being currently spoken or are yet to be spoken

  • Highlight: the highlight box shown on the currently spoken word

Spoken

  • Text: toggle on/off to apply a different color to already-spoken words

  • Color: set the color for spoken words

Default

  • Font, size, color, letter spacing, and line spacing

  • Stroke: toggle on to add an outline around the text. Adjust size and color.

  • Box: toggle on to add a background box behind the entire caption. Adjust color, corner curvature, and padding.

  • Shadow: toggle on to add a drop shadow. Adjust color, size, spread, and angle.

Highlight

  • Text: toggle on/off to apply a color to the text of the currently spoken word

  • Color: set the text color for the highlighted word

  • Box: toggle on to show a highlight box behind the currently spoken word. Adjust color, corner curvature, and padding.

  • Box animation: toggle on to add a Pop animation to the highlight box as it moves word to word

Animation

  • Effect: choose an entrance animation: None, Pop, Smooth pop, Short pop, Fly in from top, Fly in from bottom, Fly in from left, Fly in from right, Blur in, or Fade in

  • Cross dissolve: toggle on to add a dissolve transition between captions

For additional animation effects, open [Animate object] from the Premiere Assistant panel menu.

Tip: Click [Save as new template] to save your current settings as a reusable preset.

After you apply

When you click [Apply], Premiere Assistant creates a new graphic track in your Premiere timeline. Double-click the graphic track to open a sequence with three layers you can fine-tune directly in Premiere:

  • Adjustment layer: click to open Premiere's Properties panel and make adjustments without going back to Premiere Assistant.

  • Text layer: double-click to edit subtitle text directly. Good for minor fixes. For many changes, use Premiere Assistant's Captions panel instead.

  • Graphic layer: the background shapes or boxes behind the text. Edit color, position, or other properties here. Use this to change the style for specific sections only. To update all captions at once, make changes in Premiere Assistant and apply again.

Tip: If the Text layer clip isn't visible right away, the sequence can have several tracks stacked on top of each other. Expand the timeline track height, or scroll down in Premiere's timeline panel, to find it.

Troubleshooting

My custom animated caption template is missing

If your custom animated caption template isn't showing up, a temporary loading issue may be the cause. Restart both Premiere and Premiere Assistant.

If the template still doesn't appear after restarting, you'll need to recreate it.

I get an error when installing a font

If you see a "Failed to install font" error, the font file may have a conflict or didn't download correctly. Find and delete the font from your computer first, then relaunch Premiere Assistant.

Windows:

  1. Press the Windows key, search for "Control Panel," and open it.

  2. Go to Appearance and Personalization > Fonts.

  3. Find the font that caused the error and delete it. Remove all styles, such as Thin, Light, and Regular.

  4. Restart your computer and relaunch Premiere Assistant.

Mac:

  1. Open Font Book.

  2. Find the font that caused the error and select it.

  3. Delete it. Remove all styles.

  4. Restart your computer and relaunch Premiere Assistant.

The "preview" label is still visible on my animated captions

If the "preview" label doesn't disappear after your animated captions are generated, a graphic element may not have been cleaned up. Try this:

  1. Check your video tracks for a graphic clip with the "preview" label. If you find one, delete it.

  2. If the label is still visible, double-click the green nested clip in your timeline. Inside, find the graphic element for the preview label and delete it.

My animated captions don't appear on screen

If your animated captions don't appear on screen even though the graphic track was created, the caption position is likely set outside your sequence's frame. This usually happens when you apply a custom template you saved in a sequence with a different resolution.

Custom templates store position, font size, and padding as fixed pixel values based on the sequence they were created in. In a smaller sequence those values can land outside the visible frame, so the captions generate correctly but sit off screen. Open the nested sequence and the text is all still there, which is why the colors and opacity look right.

To fix:

  1. Open the [General] tab in the Animated captions panel.

  2. Under Position, click one of the three position bars. This resets X to 0 and sets Y to fit your current sequence.

  3. Click [Preview text in current frame] to check the result.

  4. Adjust the size in [Style] > [Font Size] or [General] > [Scale] if the text now looks too large or too small.

  5. Delete the graphic track that was created with the old values, then click [Apply] again.

Tip: Save a separate custom template for each video resolution and orientation you work in, then pick the matching one each time.

Animated captions keep generating in a strange size

Animated captions are sized based on your video's resolution and orientation. Very high resolutions or portrait-orientation videos can cause captions to generate incorrectly.

To fix:

  1. Lower your video's resolution and try generating again.

  2. Make sure your video is in landscape (horizontal) orientation.

You can also adjust caption size manually in [General] > [Scale] or [Style] > [Font Size].

The text looks garbled after creating animated captions from translated captions

This usually happens when the two-line caption option is on while working with translated captions.

To fix:

  1. Remove the generated animated captions.

  2. In [Captions] mode, click the paragraph icon at the bottom right and turn off the two-line caption option.

  3. Generate the animated captions again.

I get an error when applying an animated caption template

If you get an error when applying an animated caption template, two things can cause this:

  1. The template has multicam speaker settings, but your captions don't have a speaker assigned. Assign a speaker first, or use a different template.

  2. The template includes background removal, which can cause occasional errors. Try creating a new template without the background removal setting.

If neither fix works, create a new template from scratch.

An error occurs when applying animated caption effects with background removal

Some presets that include AI background removal, such as Flexi BG and Floating words, can run into errors during the background removal step. When this happens, the animated captions may not apply correctly.

Workaround:

  1. Choose a similar preset that doesn't include background removal and apply your animated captions.

  2. Remove the background separately using [Remove background] in the Premiere Assistant panel menu.

FAQs

Can I apply different caption styles for different speakers?

You can include speaker name labels in your animated captions and style them separately. In the Style tab, set Speaker name label to [Include], then click [Edit style] to customize how the label looks.

However, the caption style itself (font, size, colors, animation) stays the same for all speakers. Premiere Assistant doesn't support separate animated caption styles per speaker in one step.

For separate styles per speaker, the workaround is to create a template for each speaker and apply them one at a time: select the caption text for that speaker, go to Effect > [Add Animated Caption], and choose that speaker's template.

Can I choose which track my captions are added to?

When you apply captions, Premiere Assistant automatically places them on the highest available empty track to avoid conflicts. There's no option to choose a specific track before applying.

After applying, you can move the captions to a different track manually in Premiere.

How do I add animated caption effects to captions I've already created?

If you have existing captions in Premiere and want to add animated caption effects to them:

  1. In Premiere, export your captions as an SRT file.

  2. In Premiere Assistant, open the [Captions] menu.

  3. Import the SRT file.

  4. Generate animated captions from the imported captions.

I have an existing subtitle MOGRT template. Can I use it with Premiere Assistant?

Premiere Assistant doesn't support importing external MOGRT files, and Premiere itself won't let you drop a MOGRT straight onto captions to restyle them. Dragging a MOGRT onto an existing caption replaces the text instead of keeping it, so there's no one-click way to apply a MOGRT to a whole caption track. This is a Premiere limitation, not a Premiere Assistant one.

You still have two good ways to get a custom look on captions you made in Premiere Assistant. First, generate your captions in Premiere Assistant and apply them to your sequence as Premiere captions, then use one of the options below.

Option 1: Style the captions in Premiere's Properties panel (recommended)

This is the simplest route and doesn't need a MOGRT at all.

  1. In Premiere, select your captions and go to [Graphics and Titles] > [Convert Captions to Graphics]. In some Premiere versions, this is called [Upgrade Caption to Graphic].

  2. Double-click a graphic caption clip. The [Properties] panel opens.

  3. Click the text in the [Properties] panel, then scroll down to [Style]. In some versions, this is called [Linked style].

  4. If you already have a saved style, pick it from the dropdown to apply it.

  5. To make your own, style the selected text (font, color, size, background, and more), click the [+] button, and choose [Create style]. You can then apply that style to your other graphic captions from the same dropdown.

  6. To reuse a style file you already have, click [+], choose [Import style], import the file, and apply it from the dropdown.

Note: [Import style] brings in saved text styles, not MOGRT files. To reuse a full MOGRT design, use Option 2 below.

Option 2: Use your MOGRT as a separate graphic

Use this if you want to keep your existing MOGRT design.

  1. Add your MOGRT file to the timeline as its own graphic.

  2. Copy the text from a caption and paste it into the MOGRT's text field.

  3. Repeat for each caption you want to restyle.

Note: Once your captions are applied to the Premiere sequence, any further caption styling happens in Premiere, not in Premiere Assistant.

Tip: If you'd rather stay inside Premiere Assistant, you can build your own caption look with Animated Captions. Set the font, color, box, stroke, shadow, and animation, then save it as a custom template to reuse. See Animated Captions settings above.

How do I keep my custom templates if I need to change accounts?

Custom animated caption templates are stored in your Premiere Assistant account and can't be transferred to a new account automatically.

The best way to keep your custom templates is to update the email on your existing account instead of creating a new one. This keeps all your presets in one place.

To change your account email:

  1. Go to Cutback Dashboard and log in with the account where your presets are saved.

  2. In the left sidebar, click Settings.

  3. Under Email, click [Change].

  4. Enter your new email address and click [Send change email link].

  5. Check your inbox for the confirmation link. If you don't see it, check your spam folder.

Can I use the same custom template in sequences with different resolutions?

You can apply a custom animated caption template to any sequence, but it will not adjust itself to a different resolution or orientation. Custom templates save position, font size, padding, and shadow as fixed pixel values taken from the sequence where you created them. Applied to a sequence of a different size, your captions can come out too large, too small, or positioned outside the frame.

Cutback's built-in presets do adjust their size to your sequence automatically. This only affects custom templates you saved yourself.

The best approach is to keep one custom template per resolution and orientation you work in, and name each one so they're easy to tell apart:

  • Karaoke - 4K landscape

  • Karaoke - 1080p landscape

  • Karaoke - vertical / Reels

To make one, open a sequence of that size, adjust the position and font size until it looks right, then click [Save as new template].

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