Originally designed for use with Digital Anarchy’s Transcriptive, the free After Effects script will let users use any SRT to customize the subtitles in ways that are typically difficult in Premiere Pro by itself.

Digital Anarchy announced and immediately released its After Effects SRT Importer Script for Adobe After Effects. A free download, the Digital Anarchy After Effects SRT Importer Script allows After Effects users to easily import subtitles or captions, customize them and add graphic treatments. Once created, they can be rendered or directly imported into Premiere Pro as a saved After Effects project, where they can be used as burned-in subtitles.

“We’ve had some Transcriptive customers request a way of using After Effects to create burned-in subtitles using SRTs from Transcriptive,” said Jim Tierney, president of Digital Anarchy. “This free script will let users use any SRT to customize the subtitles in ways that are typically difficult in Premiere by itself and then easily import into Premiere.”

There is more to it, though. While it’s designed for use with Digital Anarchy’s Transcriptive, the After Effects script can use any SRT file. SRT files can be generated from many sources, and the After Effects SRT Importer Script will work with all of them, regardless of if the file is created with Transcriptive, YouTube, MacCaption, other A.I. services or even human transcription services like Rev.

Subtitles are critical in online video

Tierney added, “While Premiere Pro does allow some customization of subtitles, After Effects allows even greater customization. Many companies have style guides or other requirements that specify how their subtitles should look. After Effects can be an easier place to create these types of graphics. Of course, if you’re doing all the work in After Effects and never going to Premiere, After Effects doesn’t import SRT files natively, so the SRT Importer is required to do this kind of work.”

For social video, subtitles are critical. YouTube and Facebook videos are often watched without sound and subtitles make the video watchable. Additionally, the FCC has implemented rules for online video that require subtitles for accessibility reasons. The After Effects SRT Importer makes it simple to add subtitles to any graphics package created in After Effects and use it in Premiere Pro.

Key Features in the After Effects SRT Importer include:

• Free to download;
• Ability to create subtitles for YouTube, Facebook and other social media;
• Import any SRT file into After Effects;
• Creates black ‘caption’ background if requested;
• Usable in After Effects or Premiere Pro (via dynamic link);
• Customizable with any font or additional graphics.

The After Effects SRT Importer is a script that runs in Adobe After Effects but is usable in Premiere Pro via Adobe’s dynamic link. The script runs in After Effects CC 2014.2 and later on Macintosh OS X 10.8 and higher and Windows 7 and higher. Follow the link more information on using Transcriptive to get transcripts and create subtitles and captions.

The After Effects SRT Importer is available immediately and is free to download.