The cut is locked, the captions are done, and then the message arrives: can we get this in Korean too? If you have taken that job in Premiere Pro you know how it goes. Export a caption file, paste it into a translator, paste the results back in, then check nothing drifted out of sync. And if there is a typo in the English, you get to do it twice.
I am an editor, and this is exactly the kind of busywork I started building tools to delete. TextPilot is our text plugin for Premiere Pro and After Effects, and it does three things Premiere will not do on its own. It gathers every piece of text in your project into one list, it spell checks that text, and it translates it in bulk, then writes the results straight back into your sequence.
Below I take a finished cut, generate captions in Premiere, spell check them, and translate the lot into Korean without editing a single caption by hand. Plus the sequence trick that keeps the English master and the translated version in one project.
This video may reference an older version of TextPilot. Features and UI may have changed since recording.
Step 1: get captions into Premiere first
TextPilot works on text that already exists in your project, so the first move is Premiere doing what Premiere is good at. With your sequence selected, open the Text panel from Window, then Text. Go to the Transcript tab and generate the transcript. When Premiere finishes, click Create captions from transcript, choose your caption preset, and it builds a caption track on your timeline.
Now you have English captions on the sequence. That is your source text, and everything from here happens in TextPilot. Captions are not a requirement, by the way, TextPilot reads any text in the project. They are just the usual reason people need a translation pass.
Where TextPilot lives in Premiere Pro
TextPilot installs through Filmit Studio, our desktop app. Install Filmit Studio once and it sets up the plugins for you, so there is nothing to drag into a CEP folder by hand.
Inside Premiere Pro, go to Window, then Extensions, then Filmit Studio. You will see a lot of other Filmit extensions in that list, which is normal, they all got installed together. Filmit Studio is the one you open, because it is the hub that launches everything else. Find TextPilot in your tools and click it. It opens as a normal dockable Premiere panel, exactly like a native one, and I keep mine pinned to the top of the list.
Step 2: Scan Project
Click Scan Project. TextPilot reads through the entire Premiere Pro project and builds a list view of every piece of text it finds. Captions arrive as individual lines. So do regular text layers, and so does the text inside MOGRTs. Having it all in one place is what changes this job, because you stop hunting through a timeline for the graphic with the typo in it.
Above the list there is a sequence selector, set to All Sequences out of the box. Leave it for now. It matters a lot later.
Jump to a line to find it on the timeline
Every entry has a Jump action. Click it and TextPilot selects that item on your timeline and takes you to it, so you can see the frame the text actually sits on.
That sounds minor and it is the feature I use most. Text out of context is dangerous to edit, and before changing a word you want to know whether it is a caption mid-sentence or a name on a lower third.
Step 3: spell check your captions, because Premiere cannot
Here is the tidbit that surprises people: you cannot spell check text inside Premiere Pro or After Effects. There is no built-in spell check in either app, not for graphics and not for captions. Word processors have had this for decades, so every typo that ships in a subtitle shipped because a human eye missed it.
TextPilot does spell check. In the spelling section, set the language to auto-detect (or pick a specific one) and click Check Spelling. It walks the scanned list and flags what looks wrong. What comes back needs some judgement from you:
- Proper nouns. Surnames and business names get flagged because they are not dictionary words. Jump to the line, confirm the spelling is what you intended, move on. Nothing changes unless you say so.
- Missing diacritics. My pass caught the word cafe, a loan word that originally carries an accent. TextPilot suggested café, which is the correct form, so I took it.
- Capitalisation at the start of a line. TextPilot notices a caption beginning with a lowercase word and flags a possible sentence start. Sometimes that is right, and sometimes the line is the back half of a sentence from the previous caption, so you leave it. Good call on the plugin either way.
Pending changes, then Apply All Changes
Nothing you accept is written into the project immediately. Corrections stage as pending changes and sit there while you work through the list. When you are happy, apply an individual change or scroll to the bottom and click Apply All Changes. That staging model is what makes this safe on client work: you review the whole pass and commit in one action instead of making twenty live edits.
Pro tip: spell check and apply before you translate. A translator works from whatever text you hand it, so a typo in the English becomes a wrong word in the Korean.
Step 4: translate the whole sequence at once
In the translate section, leave the source language on auto-detect so TextPilot works out what it is reading, and pick your target language. I was going to do English to Spanish in the demo and went with Korean instead, to see how a completely different script would land.
Click Translate All. TextPilot comes back with a translated line for every entry, and like the spelling pass they arrive as pending changes rather than live edits. Accept them one at a time, or scroll to the bottom and hit Accept All. Then click Apply All Changes and the translated text goes into your captions.
One honest note about translating into a language you do not read: you cannot verify it yourself, so have a native speaker check the result before it goes to an audience. Look at names, brand terms and numbers first, because those are what a machine translation is most likely to reshape.
Your timing does not move. TextPilot swaps the text inside caption items that already exist, so the in and out points stay where Premiere put them. Fit is what to watch instead. Some languages run longer than English, and a different script needs a font containing those glyphs or you get empty boxes, so scrub the sequence afterwards for clipping and wrapping.
Applying saves your project, so scan again
When you apply changes in Premiere Pro, TextPilot saves your project as part of the process. That is normal Premiere behaviour, not something going wrong, and After Effects does not do it. All you do afterwards is click Scan Project again. The list repopulates and the captions come back in your target language. If the old text is still listed straight after applying, that is why. Rescan.
Keep both versions: the sequence selector trick
Remember that sequence selector, set to All Sequences. On that setting a scan pulls text from every sequence and your changes apply everywhere, which is perfect when the whole project should end up in one language and exactly wrong when you need an English master too. So do it this way:
- In the Project panel, right-click your finished sequence and choose Duplicate.
- Rename one copy Cut v1 English and the other Cut v1 Korean. Tag them clearly, because you are about to make them different.
- In TextPilot, set the sequence selector to the Korean copy instead of All Sequences.
- Click Scan Project. The list now holds text from that one sequence only.
- Translate, Accept All, Apply All Changes.
Your English sequence is untouched, the translated one is done, and both live in the same project. Need five languages? Duplicate five times and work through them one at a time. The rule: pick the scope before you scan, because the scan decides which text TextPilot holds.
It is also a bulk text editor
The list holds your regular text layers and MOGRT text too, so a change that would mean opening a dozen graphics becomes one pass. A client name wrong on every lower third, a date that moved, a legal line that needs rewording. Scan, edit, apply once.
TextPilot in After Effects
The same install puts TextPilot in After Effects. Same panel, different behaviour, because After Effects handles text differently. There you work with text layers across comps rather than caption items on a timeline, and applying does not force a project save. The headline reason holds in both hosts though: After Effects has no spell check either, so a bulk spelling pass over every text layer is just as useful.
Key takeaways
- Premiere makes the captions, TextPilot manages them. Transcribe and create captions from transcript in Premiere, then Scan Project to pull every caption, text layer and MOGRT into one list.
- Spell check is the feature Adobe never shipped. Neither host can spell check text. TextPilot does, with auto-detect language, catching missing accents and sentence starts as well as typos.
- Nothing is live until you apply. Corrections and translations stage as pending changes, so you review the whole pass and commit with Apply All Changes.
- Translate in bulk, then check fit. Auto-detect the source, pick a target, Translate All, Accept All, Apply. Timing stays put, so watch fonts and line lengths, then rescan.
- Duplicate the sequence to keep both languages. Tag one English and one translated, scope TextPilot to the translated copy, and both versions ship from one project.
Get started with Filmit
TextPilot installs through Filmit Studio, the desktop app that installs and updates every plugin we make. Downloading Filmit Studio is free and needs no card. TextPilot is part of the subscription, which also covers the rest of our suite for After Effects, Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve plus the effects and transitions library. There is a 7 day free trial, which does require a card, and the code MAX10 takes 10 percent off.
We update these tools constantly and there is more on the roadmap, most of it driven by what people ask for. I build what I want to use in my own edits, the team ships it, and the requests come from editors in our Discord. If TextPilot is missing something you need, that is the place to say so.
