Installed in two minutes.

Requirements

• Adobe Premiere Pro 2020 (v14) or newer, Windows or macOS.
• An API key from OpenAI (platform.openai.com/api-keys) or Groq (console.groq.com/keys- Groq's whisper-large-v3 is fast and currently very cheap).
• Internet access while transcribing - rendering and placement are fully local.
• Optional: ffmpegon your PATH lets the panel auto-compress files bigger than the API's 25 MB upload cap.

Install

Download the installer for your platform from your account page- it's a normal installer wizard with Premiere's extensions folder already preselected, and no admin rights are needed on either OS.

Windows

Run CaptionPlug-Setup-x.y.z.exe → Next → Install → Finish (there's a Launch Adobe Premiere Pro checkbox right on the finish page). The installer also registers a normal uninstaller under Apps & features.

macOS

Open CaptionPlug-x.y.z.pkg and click through - it installs for your user only, so it never even asks for a password.

Restart Premiere, then open Window ▸ Extensions ▸ Caption Plug.

The installer also copies the 62 bundled caption fonts into your per-user font folder so they're usable in Essential Graphics right away. The panel's own rendering carries the fonts built in, so animated captions look right on any machine regardless.

Sign in (once per machine)

On first launch the panel asks you to sign in with your captionplug.com account- the same email and password as this site. That's the whole activation: no license keys to copy. One purchase covers 3 machines, and you can free a slot from the account page any time you switch computers. Signing in needs internet once; after that the panel works offline.

Updates are built in

The panel checks for new builds automatically. When one ships, an ⬆ Update button appears in its top bar - one click downloads and installs it in place (settings kept), then restart Premiere. You never need to re-download from the website, though the account page always serves the newest build too.

Use it

The panel is organised into collapsible sections (Animation preset, Style, Audio, SFW mode, Transcription, Output, Storage) - closed sections show their current setting on the right, and the preview plus the Generate button stay visible at all times. First time? The panel opens a guided tutorial on first launch (reopen it any time with the ? Tutorial button in the top bar).

1. Open the sequence you want captioned - the status pill in the panel's header shows the sequence it's locked onto, with its resolution and fps.
2. Pick an animation preset and tune the style. The live preview at the top runs the actual render engine, so what you see is literally what gets rendered. The color wells open a built-in picker with a saturation/hue surface, hex field and preset swatches.
3. Optional: open SFW mode to censor inappropriate words and add bleeps - see the censor demo. The 🔇 Censor audio only button bleeps your timeline without generating captions at all.
4. Under Transcription, choose a provider and paste your API key (saved locally). Audio needs no setup: Generate grabs it straight off your timeline. Select just your dialogue clips for the cleanest transcript - the panel finds Premiere's own MP3 encoder preset, mutes unselected audio like music beds during the export, and offsets the captions so they land exactly where those clips sit. With nothing selected, the whole sequence is captioned. (Moved clips around? The Audio section's 🎯 Use timeline audio button re-exports on demand.)
5. Pick an Output mode - Animated clips (rendered PNGs, full animation) or Editable text (native caption track) - and hit Generate. Rendered caption media is saved into a Caption Plug Media folder next to your project file, so the project relinks fine later.

Want a plain SRT file on disk (for YouTube, other editors…)? Export .srt only transcribes and saves a standard SRT wherever you choose, and also attaches it as a caption track on Premiere versions that support it.

The two output modes

• Animated clips- transparent PNG image-sequence clips rendered at your sequence's exact resolution and frame rate, placed on a fresh video track. Because every frame is rasterized against the sequence fps, sync is frame-accurate by construction - no drifting keyframes, no manual nudging. Frames where nothing moves are stored as hard links rather than copies, so disk use stays far below one-PNG-per-frame.
• Editable text- a native Premiere caption track instead of rendered media: the text stays editable in the caption editor, styling lives in Essential Graphics (set it once, save a Track Style), and almost nothing touches the disk. The per-word animation presets don't apply in this mode - that's the trade.

Troubleshooting

"Wrong email or password" / "Activation limit reached"

Sign in with the same email + password you use on this site (reset it at captionplug.com/reset if needed). Limit reached? Free a slot under activated machines on your account page - takes one click - then sign in again.

The panel doesn't appear under Window ▸ Extensions

Premiere reads its extension list at startup, so an install that ran while Premiere was still open won't show up. Quit Premiere fully, rerun the installer, and reopen it - on macOS, run killall cfprefsd afterwards so the preference cache reloads.

"File is over the 25 MB API limit"

Whisper's upload cap. Export your audio as MP3 (File ▸ Export ▸ Media ▸ Format: MP3) and pick that file, or install ffmpeg and the panel compresses automatically.

Captions import but look short/long

The panel conforms still-sequences to your fps and trims each clip, but if you're on a very old Premiere build, set Preferences ▸ Media ▸ Indeterminate Media Timebaseto your sequence's frame rate before generating.

Wrong words / names misspelled

That's the transcription model. Groq's whisper-large-v3 is noticeably better than whisper-1 on names; you can also fix a word by re-rendering after editing - or use Export .srt onlyand edit text in Premiere's caption editor instead.

Premiere freezes for a moment on "Use selected clips"

Normal - Premiere's export call is blocking. The render/transcribe steps afterwards don't block the app.

"Couldn't find an audio encoder preset"

Rare - the panel reads the MP3 presets inside your Premiere install, and some IT-managed installs strip them. Save one yourself once; the plugin's epr/README.txt explains how.

Captions from selected clips land at the wrong time

Make sure the clips were still selected when you clicked the button; the exported audio is stamped with the selection's start time and the captions are offset to match it. Re-export after moving clips.

Something else? The docs cover every panel section in detail, the tutorials walk the common tasks and fixes step by step, and support@captionplug.com answers fast.