Video Editing 101: How to Add Titles and Subtitles in Premiere Pro
New to Premiere? Find out about the easiest ways to insert a title into your timeline, as well as how to create subtitles for your project.
Knowing how to place and customize titles into your project is a fundamental skill in Premiere Pro, just like performing an edit or exporting your final sequence. Since using this tool is moderately easy task to do with the brand new Essential Graphics Panel, we are going to dive into some of ways you can get titles to work in your favor. We’ll also look at how you can add subtitles in Premiere for a better viewing experience for your audience.
Step One: Opening the Essential Graphics Panel
Premiere has made it a lot easier to add titles to a project thanks to the Essential Graphics panel. It’s their own dedicated title panel that has presets and space to customize your titles without having to open a new window.
To open it, simply click the “Graphics” workspace preset at the top of Premiere, or select “Essential Graphics” from the “Window” tab at the top of Premiere. Selecting the “Graphics” tab and clicking “Text” also works.
From here, you can select from a wide range of pre-made titles from the Adobe library. These include simple motion graphics, basic lower thirds, and even credits sequences and end titles. Simply drag and drop them on to your timeline to start using them.
Step 2: Creating Your Own Titles
To create your own titles, go to the “Edit” tab of the Essential Graphics panel. From there, there’s going to be a small page icon in the bottom right of the panel. Select the icon, and then select “Text.”
This will create a new text layer on the top of your timeline above any other clips. Now, hop back into the Essential Graphics Panel, and let’s discuss all the ways you can customize your text.
Step 3: Customizing Your Text
Within the panel, there’s going to be quite a few options you have to customize your text. Let’s explore the different panels and how you can use them.
Align and Transform
The Align and Transform box is all about the size and position of your text. The top row of buttons are automatic placement tools, which automatically align your text with the dimensions of your project. You can align to the center, top, bottom, left, or right — just about anywhere you need it to be.
If you need to place your text in a specific place, you can either use the X and Y positioning parameters within this box, or simply move the text within the preview window. This area also allows you to change the scale of your text without altering the font size through the “Toggle Animation for Scale” parameter.
Text
This is where you will be altering the actual formatting and content of your text. The top box is where you change the font of your text. If you have downloaded a new font in a .ttf file from the web, it will automatically be imported into this dropdown box when put on your drive. Below that is the Font Style. If you need to change your text from regular to bold or italic, this is where you do it.
Finally, you’ve got your Paragraph tools. This is where you can align your text, adjust your kerning (the space between the letters in your text), or even add more text customization with more bold and italic options.
Appearance
This is where you add shadow or change the color of your text. With Fill, you will change the actual color of the inside of your text. Stroke will create an outline of color on your text in any color of your choosing. Shadow will create a drop of color below your text (like a shadow does), and it has a lot of adjustable parameters below such as blur, opacity, and distance. Each one will change the characteristics of the shadow below your text.
Customizable Preset Titles
In a recent update, Adobe created a new file called the .MOGRT. This is a file created in After Effects then imported into Premiere that allows customization within the Essential Graphics panel. If you want to experiment with these easy-to-use title sequences, check out PremiumBeat’s 21 free motion graphics available for download.
Adding Subtitles To Your Project in Premiere
The Adobe Caption Panel is an extremely easy one to use and implement into your project. Simply click “Captions” from the new item tab at the bottom of your Project window to begin. From there, a new video layer will appear, along with the Captions tab.
In the Captions tab, there will be + and – buttons that will let you add and delete new tracks for your subtitles. To start it off, just type in the first line of text in the first box, and adjust the timing of the in and out points to correspond with the audio within your project. From there, all you have to do is just fill in the blanks with the audio’s transferred captions.
If you want to dive in further to the customization of your captions, make sure to check out Jason Boone’s video above, or follow the article here.
Want more tips on editing audio? Check these out.
