OnCue
Captions for Premiere Pro

How to use
OnCue Captions

Word-accurate karaoke captions, built from your Premiere transcript and placed right on your timeline.

EVERYWORD,RIGHTONCUE
Why OnCue

What makes OnCue different

Six things Premiere’s own captions don’t do.

Word-perfect timing

OnCue listens to the dialogue and snaps every word to the moment it’s actually spoken. Premiere’s transcript times often land a beat late.

No audio exports

The dialogue comes straight from Premiere: read from the clip’s WAV, or rendered in the background from just the dialogue tracks.

One click to captions

Select your dialogue clip and click Get from Premiere. Its transcript, or the sequence’s, fills the caption list instantly.

Drops onto your timeline

One Long Clip lands at the exact frame on the first empty video track, highlight and animation intact. Tracks full? OnCue adds one.

Karaoke that reads well

Color, box or pop the spoken word, or reveal words as they’re said. Minimum-word rules mean no lonely hanging words.

Every font you own

Installed fonts and activated Adobe Fonts, with every weight and style, plus letter and word spacing.

Runs on your computer. Transcripts, audio and captions never leave your Mac.
Getting started

From transcript to timeline in five steps

1

Transcribe your dialogue

In Premiere, open Window › Text › Transcript and click Transcribe. Best results: nest the dialogue, render it to one clip and transcribe that clip.

2

Get the transcript

Select the dialogue clip on the timeline and click Get from Premiere. The caption list fills in.

3

Match the timing

Click Match word timing to the audio. OnCue fetches the dialogue itself and moves each word to where it’s spoken. Check it with ▶ Play with audio.

4

Fix and style

Retype any wrong words in the caption list, then pick a template or set the font, colors and highlight.

5

Generate

Choose One Long Clip in Put on timeline as, then click Generate captions on timeline.

Install

  • Double-click OnCue-Captions.ccx. Creative Cloud asks to install it: click Install.
  • Open Premiere Pro 25.6 or later and choose Window › UXP Plugins › OnCue Captions.
  • Drag the panel’s tab into a panel group to dock it. The green Connected light means it can talk to Premiere.
Updating? Install the new .ccx over the old one. Your styles, templates and caption edits are kept.
The top of the OnCue panel: transcript and timing controls
1 · Transcript & exact timing

Every word, on the beat it’s spoken

Premiere’s transcript times are close but often a little late. OnCue listens to the dialogue, finds where each word’s sound begins and moves the word there.

Premiere transcript timesScroll to match
SO
I
WENT
HOME

OnCue gets the audio by itself, so there’s nothing to export.

Dialogue clip is a WAV

Read straight from disk: only the part used in your edit, placed where the clip sits. Nothing renders and your tracks aren’t touched.

Anything else

OnCue mutes the other audio tracks, renders a 16 kHz mono WAV with Premiere’s own preset in the background, then restores your mutes and deletes the temp file.

Where Get from Premiere looks

1

Clips selected on the timeline. Their own transcript. If they have none, the sequence’s transcript, cut to the stretch of timeline they cover.

2

A transcribed clip selected in the Project panel. Placed where that clip sits on your timeline.

3

Nothing selected. Every transcribed clip on the timeline, combined.

4

Still nothing. The sequence’s own transcript.

  • Times always come back in sequence time, even when the sequence starts at a timecode like 01:00:00:00.
  • ▶ Play with audio plays the dialogue with the captions in the preview, so you can check the sync.
  • Use a WAV file… lets you supply your own audio; Load JSON… uses a transcript exported from Premiere’s Text panel.
  • Timing offset shifts every caption earlier or later for one video. Set it to 0 after matching.
The caption editor

Every line, every word, editable

Each row is one caption: its start time, then its words. Click any word to select it; the bar above the list shows that word and the tools for it.

  • Click ▾ Captions to fold the list away while you style.
  • Pinned keeps the preview in view as you scroll through the settings.
  • Words at once sets the most words per caption; Fewest words (2 by default) means a caption is never one lonely word.
The caption editor with a word selected
Fix a wordClick it and retype. Enter or Tab jumps to the next word, ⇧ Tab goes back.
Remove a wordSelect it, then Delete.
Break a caption in twoSelect the word that should start the new caption, then Split here.
Join two captionsClick ↧ on a caption to join it with the next one.
Nudge a word’s timing− 1 frame and + 1 frame move the selected word’s start.
Sync by earPlay with audio, pause where the word starts, then Start at playhead.
Move between captions← Prev caption and Next caption →; click a caption’s time to show it in the preview.
Start overRegroup rebuilds the captions from the transcript. Click it twice; it replaces your edits.
Undo / redo⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z, or the buttons. Covers caption edits and style changes.
2 · Style

Make it look like your brand

Every change shows in the preview straight away. Save a look as a template and reuse it, or share it as a file.

The font menu with a family open to show its styles

Every font you own

  • Type in the Font box to search. Every name shows in its own typeface.
  • Click N styles ▸ to open a family’s weights and italics, then click one.
  • Adobe marks your activated Adobe Fonts. A dimmed Adobe apps only font is switched on only inside Adobe apps, so the panel can’t draw it.
  • Just installed a font? Click Refresh at the bottom of the menu.
  • Letter spacing and Word spacing fine-tune the type. Double-click either to reset.

Highlight

Color the spoken word, put a box behind it, or turn it off. Show words all at once or one by one as they’re spoken. Pop active word scales up the word being said.

Colors

Text, spoken words, highlight, text on box, outline and shadow each have a color. Use the picker or type a hex code, and + Save to brand to keep your palette handy.

Outline & shadow

Outline width sets the stroke around each letter. Drop shadow sets its strength, then color, distance, softness and angle.

Layout

Alignment, side margin and vertical position place the line. Long lines shrink to fit the frame. ALL CAPS for the classic karaoke look.

3 · Create

Put it on the timeline

Choose Put on timeline as, then click Generate captions on timeline. Captions go into a new OnCue Captions bin and onto the first empty video track above V1.

One Long Clip

Recommended

Every caption in one clip, with the word highlight, box and pop animation exactly as in the preview. The most reliable choice right now.

Multiple Clips

One clip per caption line, each at its own time, with the word highlight. Easy to move, trim or delete one line.

Premiere Captions (no highlight)

Premiere’s own captions, editable in its Text panel. Plain text only. If they don’t land on the timeline, drag them from the OnCue bin.

What Premiere doesn’t let OnCue do (yet)

No Graphics text layers. Premiere doesn’t let plugins create or edit text in its Graphics (Essential Graphics) layers, so OnCue can’t place captions as editable Graphics.

No highlight, box or pop in Premiere Captions. Premiere’s caption format only holds plain styled text, so the word highlight, highlight box and pop animation only exist in One Long Clip and Multiple Clips.

The Create section of the OnCue panel
  • If every track is full, OnCue adds a new one on top.
  • The rendered frames are saved next to your project, in a folder called OnCue Captions.
  • Place on timeline again puts the last render back on the timeline without rendering again.
Shortcuts

Work faster

⌘ZUndo
⇧⌘Z⌘YRedo
⌘C⌘X⌘VCopy, cut, paste in fields and messages
⌘ASelect all in a field
Right-clickCopy · Cut · Paste · Select All
EnterTabNext word in the caption editor
⇧ TabPrevious word
↑↓→←Font menu: move, open and close a family’s styles
Double-clickReset letter or word spacing
Help

If something’s not right

A message pops up at the bottom of the panel

It says what happened and what to do. Its Copy button copies it, if you need to send it to someone.

“No transcribed clip found”

Transcribe your dialogue in Premiere’s Text panel, select the clip and click Get from Premiere again.

A font isn’t in the list

Click Refresh at the bottom of the font menu. Its footer lists every folder OnCue checked and how many fonts it found.

The panel went off-screen

Choose Window › Workspaces › Reset to Saved Layout, then Window › UXP Plugins › OnCue Captions.

The light says Not connected

Close the panel and open it again. If that doesn’t fix it, restart Premiere.

Every word, right on cue.

OnCue Captions for Premiere Pro. Runs on your computer; nothing is uploaded.