Captioneer – Animated Captions for Adobe Premiere Pro

Recently, Nic Dean, founder of Captioneer.TV, contacted me about his new captions plug-in for Adobe Premiere called Captioneer. While released earlier this year, today he releases it to a wider audience on aescripts.com.

I like supporting smaller developers so I thought it worthwhile to learn more about what this software does. Here is our email interview.

Larry: Nic, what is Captioneer?

Nic: Captioneer is a Premiere Pro extension that creates animated captions directly in your timeline. It uses .mogrt files for the captions which are easily modified by an editor.

Larry: What’s a .mogrt and how is that different from other graphics files?

Nic: Adobe’s definition is: “A .mogrt is a Motion Graphics Template file created in After Effects or Premiere Pro. Motion Graphics templates give editors the power of After Effects motion graphics, packaged up as templates with easy-to-use controls designed to be customized in Premiere Pro.” A .mogrt is very different from other graphics files (like .jpg, .png, or .psd), because an editor can modify the internal graphic settings like text, color, font styles, and more.

Larry: Why did you create it?

Nic: I built Captioneer because captions have exploded on social media. Dozens of websites and phone apps can overlay subtitles on video. But historically, designing captions inside Premiere Pro has been difficult, time-consuming, and Premiere Pro simply isn’t built for animation. I wanted to be able to design & animate motion graphics inside After Effects and to use those designs inside Premiere Pro for captions.

Click to see larger image.

Larry: How is this different from what we can do now in the Essential Graphics panel in Premiere?

Nic: Captioneer does batch actions that are impossible in Premiere Pro or the Essential Graphics Panel. It can batch-insert animated .mogrts according to SRT, VTT, or CSV caption files. It can copy/paste Essential Graphics settings between .mogrt clips, which Premiere Pro can’t do natively. And you can batch-replace all text inside .mogrts for seamless localization of your motion graphics in any language.

Larry: How does Captioneer work?

Nic: At the core, it is very simple. Captioneer takes the timing data from a text file (SRT, VTT, or CSV), and inserts .mogrts onto the timeline according to that timing data. The rest of the extension supports the editing workflow: key features like “In to Out” regions, “Video Track” selection, auto-scaling to frame size, replace text, keyboard shortcuts, and so much more. It’s remarkably fast and we used Adobe Spectrum so it meshes right into the Premiere Pro UI.

Larry: If we are, say, graphically challenged, are there templates we can use with it?

Nic: Absolutely! We bundled 10 easy-to-use and distinct .mogrts, and each one can be deeply customized to make something unique for your own brand. A frequent editor complaint about marketplaces like Motion Array or Envato, is that purchased templates are slow to render and complex to edit. We took care to carefully optimize the Captioneer .mogrts for speed, consistency, and ease-of-use. You can expect real-time playback on a lightweight Mac laptop with all the Captioneer .mogrts. And we listen to our customers, and can even build new templates that people ask for.

Larry: How do you create or modify a .mogrt?

Nic: You can build .mogrts yourself in After Effects! You simply add controls to the Essential Graphics Panel (EGP) in After Effects, export a .mogrt, and can import that .mogrt via Premiere Pro’s Essential Graphics panel. The controls you added to the .mogrts can be edited from Premiere Pro’s Essential Graphics (or Properties) panel. Adobe Trainer Kyle Hamrick has a great introductory lesson on the full Essential Graphics workflow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz8gqGsuVGU

Larry: Who is your target market?

Nic: My target market is Premiere Pro editors who want to create short-form video or clips for social media, while retaining control of their editing timeline.

Larry: What does it cost?

Nic: Captioneer costs $100 as a one-time fee. I think we all have subscription-fatigue, and it was important to me that editors could pay one price and never worry about next month’s billing cycle. That said, I had many discussions around pricing, and some people genuinely prefer subscriptions. So we also offer a $10/mo option for those folks. I wanted the tool to be accessible and allow people to choose their own pricing model.

Larry: Are there plans for updates in the future?

Nic: Since launching in March 2024, we have released several new core features, added new .mogrts, and partnered with video creators for YouTube tutorials. As Premiere Pro and After Effects push new features for text, we will continue to update Captioneer.

Larry: Write a one-paragraph commercial describing your product

Nic: Wouldn’t it be great to get instant animated captions in the Premiere Pro timeline? But editing isn’t a one-and-done activity; it’s iterative. You want to change the timing of your clips, reframe sequences, add Nests, transitions, and effects. Captions need to be as flexible as the rest of your footage. The Captioneer for Premiere extension makes that a reality. You can create a full sequence of animated captions, batch-edit settings, and never touch keyframes again. It’s the fastest way to spit out social clips from Premiere Pro. And for those corporate clients, you can design captions in line with their branding.

Captioneer is available now at aescripts.com and comes with a 14-day Free Trial, and 20% off until October. If you buy it and don’t love it, email us and we’ll refund you no questions asked.

Larry: Nic, thanks for your time. And thanks for all your hard work on Captioneer.