How to add sound effects to animated captions in Premiere Pro (pop, whoosh, click)

Step by step

1. Open the Sound pane — In 1 Style, click ✏️ Customize, open a Style row and click 🔊 Sound.

2. Choose how many sounds — Set Number of sounds from 0 to 4. With 2 or more, Subkick Caption picks one at random for each word.

3. Pick the sounds — Click the File field to open Choose a sound: click a tile to listen, click it again (or ✓ Choose) to keep it.

4. Set volume and timing — Adjust Volume (dB), then drag the Timing cursor on the waveform to the moment of the sound that should hit the word.

5. Listen — Click 🔊 Play with sound under the example preview, or ▶ in 3 Layout to hear the block on your video.

Where are the sound settings?

Sounds are set per style, like the font and the animation. In 1 Style, click ✏️ Customize, open a Style N row and choose the 🔊 Sound pane. A new style has no sound; every Subkick preset comes with its own.

Why it matters: adding a pop or a whoosh under each word by hand means placing dozens of audio clips and lining each one up on its word. Here, the sound is part of the style: every word that uses it gets its sound, aligned on its entrance, on the whole video.

Volume and number of sounds

The top of the pane has two settings side by side:

Setting	Range (default)	What it does
Volume (dB)	−40 to +6 (−15)	Level of this style’s sounds. All the way left (−40 dB) = muted: no sound is placed
Number of sounds	0 to 4	0 = no sound for this style. 2 or more = one of them is picked at random for each word

With one sound, the field is called File; with several, each line is Sound N (variation). Variations keep a long video from sounding repetitive: three different pops alternate instead of the same one forty times.

How to choose a sound: the sound browser

Click the File field (or Sound N (variation)) to open Choose a sound.

In the browser	What it does
Search a sound…	Filters the sounds by name
All, ★ Favorites, Recent	The whole list, your favorite sounds (★ on a tile), the last ones you chose
Families on the left	Grouped under My sounds and Built-in sounds
A tile (name, waveform, duration)	Click = listen · click again or ✓ Choose = choose
∅ No sound	Leaves this line empty
🎲 Fill the variations from this selection	With 2 or more sounds: fills every variation at once with different sounds from what’s shown
Keyboard	↑↓←→ browse and play (Mac: Cmd + arrows), Enter choose, Esc close

Without opening the browser, ◀ and ▶ on each side of the field switch to the previous or next sound and play it right away.

Tip: to get three different whooshes in one go, set Number of sounds to 3, open the browser, click the Woosh or Text Woosh family on the left, then click 🎲 Fill the variations from this selection.

The 73 built-in sounds

Subkick Caption comes with 73 sounds in 29 families: Bell, Blip, Boing, Bubble Ding, Bubble Glitch, Bubble Pop, Camera, Click, Coin, Confirm, Ding, Marker, Mouth Pop, Page Turn, Phone Typing, Punch, Retro Blip, Retro Button, Retro Select, Switch, Text Woosh, Thud, Tone, Typer, Typewriter, Vinyl, Wood, Woosh and Zap. Pops and clicks suit word-by-word captions; whooshes suit slides; typewriter and typing sounds suit storytelling captions and line-by-line appearance.

How to add your own sounds

1. In the 🔊 Sound pane, click 📁 at the bottom (next to Sounds read from: …): your sounds folder opens. It’s Documents/Subkick Caption/sounds.
2. Copy your files into it: .wav, .mp3, .aac, .m4a, .aif or .aiff, 30 MB max per file (larger files are skipped).
3. Back in the panel, click 🔄 to refresh the list. Your files appear under My sounds.

Files are grouped into families by their name without the final number: Swoosh_1.wav, Swoosh_2.wav and Swoosh_3.wav make a Swoosh family. If one of your files has the same name as a built-in sound, yours is used.

Timing and trimming: when the sound hits the word

Under each chosen sound, a waveform shows three handles:

• Timing — the moment of the sound that should hit the word. Subkick Caption places it automatically on the loudest moment of the file; drag it, or click in the waveform, to move it. ↺ puts it back on the detected impact.
• End point — drag it to cut the end of the sound (useful for long tails).
• Start point — the beginning of the range you hear with ▶ Listen; the Timing cursor always stays between the two points.

On the timeline, the sound starts from the beginning of its file and is placed so that the Timing moment lands halfway through the word’s entrance animation (or right when the word appears if it has no animation). The info line under the waveform (Trim: … → … s · impact … s) gives the exact values.

Note: a sound with a long silence at its very start is best trimmed in an audio editor before you add it: the Timing cursor handles the hit, but the file still plays from its very start.

Sounds and the hierarchy of words

Since sounds belong to styles, they follow the hierarchy of your caption — see Several styles per caption:

• Sounds only on key words: give sounds to the Important style, set Number of sounds to 0 on the others.
• A softer sound for small words: lower Volume (dB) on the Small style.
• Same sounds everywhere: ⧉ Copy this sound setting to another style copies the sounds and the volume to the styles you tick.
• One word only: in 3 Layout, right-click the word; under Sound, choose Inherited, None or another style’s sounds — see Customize a single word.

When you click a word in 3 Layout to give it another style, its sound changes with it.

How to hear the result

• 🔊 Play with sound, under the example preview, loops the example with its sounds.
• ▶ in 3 Layout plays the block on your video with its animations and sounds — see Layout.
• In the gallery, turn on Filters ▾ › 🔇 Hover sounds to hear each preset’s sounds when you hover its card.

When you generate, the sound files are imported into your project and placed with the captions. Your sounds are saved in your presets: if you share a preset that uses your own sounds, send the sound files too — see Save and reuse your presets.

Frequently asked questions

Can I add sound effects to captions automatically in Premiere Pro?

Yes. In Subkick Caption, each caption style can carry up to 4 sounds; every word that uses this style gets one, timed to its entrance, when you generate. 73 sounds come with the plugin: pops, clicks, whooshes, typewriter, punches, coins and more.

Can I use my own sound effects in Subkick Caption?

Yes. Put .wav, .mp3, .aac, .m4a, .aif or .aiff files (30 MB max each) in the Documents/Subkick Caption/sounds folder, then click 🔄 in the 🔊 Sound pane. They appear under My sounds in the sound browser.

How do I put a sound only on the important words?

Give sounds only to the style used by your important words, and set Number of sounds to 0 on the other styles. Subkick Caption places a sound on every word of a style that has one.

How do I mute the sounds of a caption style?

Drag Volume (dB) all the way left, to −40 dB: Subkick Caption treats it as muted and places no sound. You can also set Number of sounds to 0.

Why do different sounds alternate on my captions?

When Number of sounds is 2 or more, Subkick Caption picks one of them at random for each word, so a long video doesn't repeat the exact same sound. Set it to 1 to always use the same sound.

Can I change or remove the sound of a single word?

Yes. In the Layout step, right-click the word: under Sound, choose Inherited (the sound of its style), None, or the sounds of another style, for that word only.