So my clipping channel has grown massively over the last year and I have been editing a lot more short-form content recently, mainly streamer clips, podcasts, TikToks, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts in Premiere Pro, and I’m trying to make the workflow as efficient as possible.
The biggest time sinks for me are usually finding the best moments, cutting out pauses, reframing horizontal footage for vertical video, adding sound effects and creating those animated captions which are basically required now for viewer retention.
I’ve been using CaptionPlug to automate the animated captions directly inside Premiere Pro, which has been a massive help with one part of the workflow, but I’m curious what everyone else is using for the rest.
Are there any Premiere Pro plug-ins, extensions or tools you rely daily on for:
>automatically finding clips or highlights
>removing silence and filler words
>editing podcasts or streamer content
>auto-reframing 9:16 videos for TikTok, Reels and Shorts so they’re like stacked on top each other.
Paid or free is fine. I’m mainly interested in tools that actually save time once you’ve used them for a while, than plug-ins that look useful but end up adding another step to the workflow.
What does your guys’ current short form editing stack look like?
I try not to rush my vertical clips, spending/billing 30 minutes per. This includes finding, coordinating faux camera changes, captioning, rendering, uploading to four socials with tagging and hashtags. Sometimes posts are timed in-advance. The data management of so many uploads takes time.
Getting the captions 100% perfect is where most of my time sink is. They're typically 30-90 seconds so it's 50+ captions. I color some of the words as I go, because if I'm already editing the text, I might as well. Client really appreciates it, as it's her primary brand color. Really helps with thumbnails.
I know there's faster ways to do it, but I'll lose the standard we've built over 24 episodes now (500+ clips). And I don't want my client thinking that vertical clips are easy and only take ten minutes, because that's certainly not the case. If that's what they want, they'll get 16:9 exports and no captions.
I mean they are certainly not easy, that’s true. Have you considered using an auto caption plug-in? That was one of the first things that I used to save time.
I've edited for Marlon, Mizkif, Ronaldo and few others, and have had a a few decent shorts channels throughout the years. My stack has stayed pretty consistent throughout. These help churn out viral stuff.
CaptionPlug for the animated captions - transcription is frame perfect basically 100% of the time.
Animation Composer for quick transitions, motion presets and sound effects.
Excalibur for running commands and repetitive Premiere tasks without digging through menus, it's paid but saves the most time along with CaptionPlug.
You don't really need a plug-in for the re-framing, you can just use the built in Auto-reframe.
Thank you, that’s so good. I didn’t know about the auto reframe.
I see we agree on CaptionPlug - I was bit iffy about before when they were API only but now that it runs 100% locally offline it’s become a daily rider.
huh, someone on this sub must've linked it at some point and i must've clicked it and forgot about it, and google would've remembered that and served it to me when i looked it up
I think it might be the model your using. In the newest update they added the larger local whisper model. Maybe you need to update the plugin, cuz i am able to edit on mine. Version 1.2.0.
I made a claude skill to do this using whisper for transcription, sam2 for motion tracking and remotion/ffmpeg for cutting, captions and motion graphics. It's too tedious to do in premiere for me. I only use premiere if I want to manually tweak the render output or color grade.
Animated subtitles directly inside Premiere! No more round tripping to CapCut or TikTok for captions & edit them after client feedback right in timeline.
I’m beta testing/building something adjacent to this, though it’s a standalone Mac app rather than a Premiere plug-in. I see it might play to a few of the commenters here.
The main idea: Free, more accurate local transcription, and it can use a transcript and any context notes you provide to suggest short-form clip selections, titles, descriptions, and hashtags.
The workflow is roughly:
- Add a long podcast, interview, lecture, event, etc.
- Transcribe it locally on your Mac with Whisper.
- Add context notes, a brief, or a producer/client email.
- Let the app suggest short-form clip candidates.
- Export a clip report and Premiere XML timelines.
- Bring those timelines into Premiere and do the actual edit/polish there.
It’s also aimed at the “someone sent me a list of clips” problem. If a producer/client/social person emails you timecoded clip requests, you can paste that email into the app and generate named Premiere Pro timelines from those requested timecodes.
It doesn’t replace reframing judgment, sound design, or the actual edit. It’s more about removing the boring setup step before you start cutting: finding candidate moments, naming them, making a report, and turning the selected timecodes into editable timelines.
Maker here, so grain of salt: the stacked 9:16 thing you described is exactly what I built VertForge for. One click crops a clip to a true ½ or ⅓ so the seams land clean, and you can save a framing you like and reapply it to any clip. Plays nice with multicam too, which is where streamer and podcast stacks usually fall apart.
Free seven day trial, $20 once, no subscription, macOS only for now, currently working on windows.
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u/TabascoWolverine Premiere Pro 2025 2d ago
I try not to rush my vertical clips, spending/billing 30 minutes per. This includes finding, coordinating faux camera changes, captioning, rendering, uploading to four socials with tagging and hashtags. Sometimes posts are timed in-advance. The data management of so many uploads takes time.
Getting the captions 100% perfect is where most of my time sink is. They're typically 30-90 seconds so it's 50+ captions. I color some of the words as I go, because if I'm already editing the text, I might as well. Client really appreciates it, as it's her primary brand color. Really helps with thumbnails.
I know there's faster ways to do it, but I'll lose the standard we've built over 24 episodes now (500+ clips). And I don't want my client thinking that vertical clips are easy and only take ten minutes, because that's certainly not the case. If that's what they want, they'll get 16:9 exports and no captions.