Premiere Pro captions not exporting

Open the export dialog, click the Captions tab, and change Export Options from None to Burn Captions Into Video. That fixes it nine times out of ten. The rest of this page covers the tenth.

Short on time? Captions Gen does animated karaoke captions in Premiere Pro in one click. Try it free (15 minutes of transcription included).

The Captions tab

Premiere does not export captions unless you tell it to, and the setting is on its own tab that many people never open. The choices are None (nothing exported), Create Sidecar File (a separate .srt or similar), and Burn Captions Into Video (text rendered into the picture). For social platforms, burn in.

Sidecar exported, but the platform shows nothing

A sidecar file is a separate upload. Instagram and TikTok don't accept it, so burn in for those. YouTube accepts it under Subtitles in the upload flow.

Closed captions and burn-in

If your track format is CEA-608 or 708, some export formats only embed the caption data instead of burning it. Convert the track to Subtitle first if you need the text visible in the picture.

Caption track disabled

Check the output toggle on the caption track header. A disabled track exports nothing even with burn-in selected.

Media Encoder queue

If you send the export to Media Encoder, the caption setting travels with it, but check it there too: reopening the preset in Media Encoder occasionally resets the Captions tab to None.