Importing SRT subtitles into Premiere Pro CC

[sakiski]

without using external paid plugins like EzTitles for Premiere Pro CC or SugarFX. These require a lot of money to purchase a full version.

VLC player has excellent subtitle support for all formats, while Premiere Pro CC has terrible subtitle support.

Any help is appreciated.

[poisondeathray]

A workaround is to use avisynth (using masksub() ) to hardsub a "transparent" video with the subs, to use as an overlay to import into PP or any editor.

The benefit of this method is all other subs types are supported like VLC (e.g. ASS, SSA, Vobsubs, colors, fonts, effects, styles etc...) , the negative is it takes longer

[sakiski]

Do I need any other software beside AVISynth to create the transparent sub video clip?

[poisondeathray]

Do I need any other software beside AVISynth to create the transparent sub video clip?

Avisynth is just a frameserver, so you need something to actually encode with. Many people use vdub, or even ffmpeg

Lossless RGBA options commonly used in PP are ut video codec, lagarith .

[sakiski]

I am very new to all this. Is there a first timer guide for creating a transparent subtitle video clip to overlap on PP?

[poisondeathray]

I am very new to all this. Is there a first timer guide for creating a transparent subtitle video clip to overlap on PP?

Before you proceed, decide if you want to adjust the subs. E.g you can convert them to ASS subs which have control over all those other parameters. A good ASS sub editor is aegisub


There is a bit of a learning curve for avisynth. When you have time later you can read about the basics

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Main_Page
http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Main_Page#New_to_AviSynth_-_start_here



1) Install avisynth

2) Download vsfilter.dll, put in the avisynth/plugins folder (most avisynth .dll's will autoload in the plugins folder)

3) Create a script. A good script editor is avspmod, since you can preview scripts, but you can just as easily use notepad , saving it, then changing the extension from .txt to .avs

In avisynth, you have to specify full paths, if the .avs is not in the same directory. For example, if "subtitles.srt" was in c:\folder you would have to add that. Below I just used "PATH" to denote that. Obviously change the filenames to match your subs. If you made ASS subs, change the filename and extension. The basic script is like this:

You need to fill in the other parameters specific to your video (width, height, framerate, framecount)

MaskSub("PATH\subtitles.srt" , width, height, framerate, framecount)
FlipVertical()

4) Install ut video codec (or lagarith)

5) Download vdub , open that .avs script in vdub. Select video=>compression , utvideo RGBA or lagarith set to RGBA in the configuration. The "A" is for alpha channel . File=>save as AVI

6) Import that AVI as an overlay. You might have to interpret the alpha channel in some programs (right click, interpret).