Common tasks, solved.

Install Caption Plug from scratch

From purchase to the panel open in Premiere Pro - about two minutes.

1. Buy Caption Plug (or log in) and open your account page - the installers live there.
2. Download the one for your platform: CaptionPlug-Setup-x.y.z.exe on Windows, CaptionPlug-x.y.z.pkg on macOS.
3. Run it and click through the wizard - the right Premiere extensions folder is preselected and no admin rights are needed. (As with any app downloaded from the web, your OS may ask you to confirm the first launch once: on Windows choose More info → Run anyway, on macOS right-click the .pkg and choose Open.)
4. Restart Premiere Pro, then open Window ▸ Extensions ▸ Caption Plug.
5. Sign in with your captionplug.com email and password - that's the whole activation. The guided tutorial takes it from there.

The full walkthrough, requirements included, is on the setup guide.

Move to a new computer

One purchase covers 3 machines - swapping one out takes a minute.

1. On your account page, find activated machines.
2. Click to free the slot of the machine you're retiring.
3. Install the plugin on the new computer (see the install tutorial) and sign in there.

Machines you keep stay signed in and keep working offline - freeing a slot only affects the machine you removed.

Update to the latest version

1. When a new build ships, an ⬆ Updatebutton appears in the panel's top bar (the panel checks twice a day). Click it.
2. The update downloads and installs in place - settings kept.
3. Restart Premiere Pro. Done.

Impatient? Check for updates in the Account & updates section forces a check right now, and your account page always serves the newest installer. What changed in each release is in the changelog.

Generate your first captions

1. Open the sequence you want captioned - the status pill in the panel's header should show its name, resolution and frame rate.
2. Pick an animation preset (start with Beast Pop or CapCut Bounce) and tune colors and font under Style. The live preview is the actual render engine - what you see is what lands on the timeline.
3. First time only: paste your OpenAI or Groq API key under Transcription.
4. Hit Generate. The audio comes straight off your timeline, transcription runs through your key, and animated captions land on a new track, synced to the word.

Caption only your dialogue clips

A music bed under your dialogue muddies the transcript. Selection fixes it - and the panel handles the timing math.

1. In your sequence, select just the dialogue clips you want transcribed.
2. Hit Generate. The panel mutes unselected audio (music, SFX) during its export, so only your dialogue reaches the transcriber.
3. Captions are offset automatically to land exactly where the selected clips sit.

Moved clips around afterwards? Open Audio and click 🎯 Use timeline audio to re-export before regenerating - see also captions land at the wrong time.

Get the one-word-at-a-time style

1. Under Style, set Words per caption to 1.
2. Pick a punchy preset - Punch In, Impact Shake or Beast Pop all read great one word at a time.
3. Generate. Each word pops on exactly when it's spoken.

For the classic MrBeast group look instead, use 2-4 words per caption - the spoken word still highlights within the group.

Censor swearing & bleep the timeline

1. Open the SFW mode section.
2. Turn on Censor inappropriate words to mask them in the captions (F**k style). Exact-word matching means clean words like class or document are never touched.
3. Turn on Add censor bleeps to the timeline to drop a bleep tone on a new audio track over swear words. Leave Cut the original audio under each bleep on so only the bleep is audible - it's non-destructive volume keyframes.
4. Generate as usual.

Just want the audio cleaned, no captions? The 🔇 Censor audio only button does the whole bleep pass by itself and leaves your video tracks untouched. Watch it in the censor demo.

Export a plain SRT file

1. Set up transcription as usual (the preset doesn't matter for SRT).
2. In Output, choose Export .srt only.
3. Pick where to save. You get a standard SRT for YouTube or any editor - and on Premiere versions that support it, the file is also attached as a caption track.

The panel isn't under Window ▸ Extensions

Premiere reads its extension list at startup, so an install that ran while Premiere was open won't show up until things are reset in the right order:

1. Quit Premiere Pro completely (check it's really closed, not minimized).
2. Run the installer again.
3. macOS only: run killall cfprefsd in Terminal so the preference cache reloads.
4. Start Premiere and check Window ▸ Extensions again.

Fix wrong or misspelled words

Transcription quality is the model's job - but you have three good levers:

1. Switch to Groq's whisper-large-v3 under Transcription - noticeably better than whisper-1 on names, and currently very cheap.
2. Fix and regenerate- transcripts are cached per audio file, so correcting a word and re-rendering is fast and doesn't re-upload anything.
3. Or keep text editable - use Editable text output (or Export .srt only) and fix words directly in Premiere's caption editor.

Get past the 25 MB upload limit

The transcription providers cap uploads at 25 MB (roughly 30-40 minutes of MP3 speech). Two ways through:

1. Install ffmpeg (and have it on your PATH) - the panel then auto-compresses anything over the cap, no interaction needed.
2. Or export smaller audio yourself: File ▸ Export ▸ Media ▸ Format: MP3, then point the panel at that file.

Captions land at the wrong time

The exported audio is stamped with your selection's start time, and captions are offset to match. Timing drifts when the timeline changed after that export:

1. Re-select your dialogue clips (make sure they're still selected when you click).
2. Click 🎯 Use timeline audio in the Audiosection to re-export at the clips' current position.
3. Generate again - cached transcription makes this fast.

Reclaim disk space from caption media

Animated captions are rendered as PNG-sequence clips in the Caption Plug Media folder next to your project. Identical hold frames are hard-linked (not copied), so real usage is far below the frame count - but old generations accumulate:

1. Open the Storage section.
2. Click 🧹 Clean up old caption media - it deletes every render folder the current project no longer references, and nothing it still uses.

Stuck on something these don't cover? Check the docs or email support@captionplug.com - a human reads every message.