Text-Based Editing in Premiere Pro Beta Available

Software News

by Jürgen MoorsFebruary 13^th, 2023

Adobe Premiere just introduced a text-based editing function in Premiere Pro (Beta version), which makes assembling a rough cut almost as simple as editing a Word document. So let’s have a closer look at Adobe’s new feature and find out how you could use it for your benefit.

This feature could really be quite helpful, especially in interview-heavy documentaries that are more about the content than the emotions and especially when producing under time pressure. But before we have a closer look at this new feature, let’s take a look back at how it has been working so far.

The traditional way of editing interviews

First of all, you have to transcribe your footage to get a text version of your interviews. You could have an actual human transcribe the interviews for you, or use the built-in automatic transcription function of Adobe Premiere, for example. Next, the director has to read the interviews and mark the parts they want to use, find the right order for the selected parts, and then the editor can use this information to create the so-called first “paper cut”.

Adobe Premiere’s text-based editing

Text-based editing is designed to create a rough cut faster by using the built-in automatic transcription function of Adobe Premiere and then editing it like a Word document. By cutting and pasting sentences, the video clips in your timeline will directly follow your text edits. Text-based editing is available in the Premiere Pro (Beta) which you can download and install separately from the current Premiere Pro release.

How to – watch this short tutorial

• Transcribe your footage for text-based editing by using built-in automatic transcription
• Set up the text-based editing workspace
• Search for key moments
• Do 3-point editing (insert content from source to sequence)
• Do some sequence editing
• Change font size
• Show and hide pauses
• Use document editing keyboard shortcuts

It’s important to keep in mind that it is still on a beta level and may not work perfectly yet. But this is exactly why Adobe is asking for your opinion. Here is a short video that shows you how to directly give feedback to the Adobe product team, report a bug, or even request a feature, that you would like to be part of the software that you are missing.

Simon Says and Digital Anarchy Transcriptive Rough Cutter

This is very useful when it comes to having a built-in automatic transcription function and a text-based editing tool built directly in Adobe Premiere, but it is also not exactly new. Back in 2020, we already reported on Simon Says Assemble, a transcription tool for text-based editing. Also, you can find the interview we did with CEO Shamir Allibhai here.

Another competitor is Digital Anarchy Transcriptive Rough Cutter which offers a very similar AI-driven text-based editing function.

So what do you think about text-based editing in Premiere Pro Beta? Have you ever used Simon Says or the Digital Anarchy Transcriptive Rough Cutter to work on your projects? Is it a game changer for you, that the tool is now built-in in Premiere? Feel free to let us know in the comment section below!