Import YouTube Subtitles into Premiere Pro

Which caption formats does Premiere Pro import?#

Premiere Pro imports SRT as a caption track, and SRT is the one subtitle format B-ROLL writes that fits that route. Premiere Pro also reads broadcast caption files such as SCC, MCC, EBU STL and DFXP or XML, but a YouTube download never produces those.

The table maps each option in B-ROLL’s Subtitles menu to what Premiere Pro does with the result.

Keep the subtitles as a separate SRT for editing. Why a sidecar file beats a track inside the video, and where VTT and ASS still make sense, is laid out in SRT vs VTT vs ASS: which subtitle format to keep. More editing workflows sit in Guides: YouTube Footage from Download to Timeline.

How do you download captions for Premiere with B-ROLL?#

Set B-ROLL’s Subtitles menu to SRT before you paste the link. B-ROLL downloads the video first, then fetches the subtitles in a separate pass and saves them next to the video as Title.lang.srt.

For the picture, choose ProRes or DNx in the Format menu. Premiere Pro may refuse the AV1 or VP9 video inside a YouTube MP4, and the converted .mov avoids that; the full reasoning is in downloading YouTube videos for Premiere Pro and After Effects.

The Subtitles dialog decides which track you get. B-ROLL splits the list into “OFFICIAL: uploaded by the creator” and “AUTO-GENERATED”, and pre-ticks the original language, the app language and English. Untick what the sequence does not need: three ticked languages mean three SRT files, moved into a Title - subtitles folder. The menu options and the language dialog are covered in full in the YouTube subtitle downloader.

Already downloaded the video without subtitles? Paste the link again with the same settings and choose Only subtitles in the “Already downloaded” dialog to fetch just the SRT.

How do you import the SRT into Premiere Pro?#

Premiere Pro treats an SRT like any other media file: import it into the project, then drag it into the sequence. Dropping the SRT on the timeline creates a caption track over the video tracks, with one editable caption block per cue in the file.

Two routes lead to the same caption track. The first is File, Import, which puts the SRT in the Project panel next to your .mov, ready to drag. The second starts in the Text panel: on its Captions tab, Import captions from file reads the SRT straight into the open sequence.

SRT stores cue times in milliseconds, and Premiere Pro places each cue on the sequence’s frame grid. Two sequences with different frame rates can therefore show slightly different in and out frames for the same cue, which is expected and not a sync fault. Because B-ROLL keeps the source frame rate in the .mov, building the sequence from the clip keeps the captions on the frames the speaker talks over.

How do you line up YouTube captions with a trimmed clip in Premiere?#

YouTube subtitles cover the whole video, so a caption track for a clip must be offset by the clip’s in point. B-ROLL fetches the full-length SRT even when you download only a section, and names it after the video, not after the clip.

Read the in point from the clip’s file name. A clip saved as Interview [02-10 to 02-38].mov starts at 2:10 of the source, so the line spoken at 2:10 sits at 00:02:10 in the SRT. The simplest fix inside Premiere Pro keeps every time positive:

Two B-ROLL details change the offset. The default fast cut snaps to keyframes, so a clip can start slightly before the time you asked for; nudge the captions by a few frames, or download with Exact frame cut (slower, re-encodes) in Advanced options to make the offset exact. Clip names also drop the hour: a part starting at 1:05:30 is named [05-30 to ...], so add the hour yourself.

How do you restyle the caption track in Premiere?#

Caption blocks in Premiere Pro are text you style like titles: select them on the caption track and change font, size, color, background box and position. Save the result as a track style so every caption on the track follows it.

Select all the blocks on the caption track first, or the change applies to one cue only. The styling controls live in the Essential Graphics panel, shown as the Properties panel in recent Premiere Pro releases.

Restyling changes only the look: the words and timings still come from YouTube, so proofread the track before export.

What goes wrong when YouTube captions come into Premiere?#

Most caption problems in Premiere Pro come from the wrong file type or the wrong YouTube track, not from Premiere itself.

• Every line appears twice. As of September 2026, YouTube’s auto-generated tracks can arrive as rolling captions, where each line shows up in two overlapping cues; pick the creator’s track with Only official subtitles, or clean the file as shown in downloading YouTube auto-generated captions as SRT.
• Captions run early. The SRT covers the full video and the clip starts later; offset the track by the in point in the clip’s name.
• Premiere will not take the file. The file is a .vtt or .ass, or the captions sit embedded inside the video; download again with SRT.
• No SRT appeared at all. The video may have no track in the language you ticked; work through YouTube subtitles not downloading: causes and fixes.
• Three files instead of one. The dialog pre-ticked several languages; the files are in the Title - subtitles folder.

YouTube Help says automatic captions are generated by machine learning and that their quality may vary (Use automatic captioning), so proofread names and technical terms before the captions reach a client.