Avid ScriptSync

@marios94 +1!

I actually built a quick ScriptSync-style feature using a custom panel feature yesterday morning.

The takeaways from this little endeavor were revealing and seem worth sharing:

Keep in mind: this wasn't an attempt to create a marketable enterprise panel for all possible use cases.  Just something developed quickly sufficient for the current project.

Also it also wasn't designed to mimic a lined script the way Avid's ScriptSync does.  But the results after one morning of coding exceeded our expectations.  What seemed like a workaround -- abandoing the "lined script" design, for our purposes, turned out to be a strength.

Here's why: While Avid's ScriptSync delivers a polished & familiar look, it has a number of down-sides:

 • The relentless double-clicking that wears on you when auditioning lots of takes.

 • The clumsiness with which it handles takes in series (do-overs, mistakes, resets) -- that great look can, in real world situations, can bog itself down into a busy, clumsy mess.

 • It uses a proprietary "Script" file that cannot be customized and extended

Here are the unexpected up-sides of the custom panel hack job we did:

• Everything is single-click-to-play.  We have lots of takes.  It seems like a small thing, but in practice single vs double clicking makes a big difference.

• Because we're in HTML the UI is extremely flexible. We went with buttons appended to the end of every line.  We might switch to pull-downs in a few days, or, as we go forward, develop something more sophisticated.  Anything is possible.  It's a custom panel.  We decide.

• It takes in a Final Draft script and extends it without changing the original.  You can try and evolve your ideas as your show evolves.  In other words we're working with an human readable industry standard format whereas ScryptSync uses opaque binary files that are closed to 3rd party developers.

Bottom line: For our purposes intended hack job we did in about 4 hours is outperforming ScriptSync

Implications:

 • This is very doable in Adobe.  With a slightly bigger team (i.e. more than one coder) you can have an enterprise level solution beta testing in short order.

 • The power Adobe has unleashed for post production with its Custom HTML Panels is nothing short of revolutionary.  It can't be overstated.  I hope posts like these motivate Adobe to commit more resources to extending custom automation on its software... because....

Shorcomings of the API  (@Bruce Bullis)

• It's possible to get the playhead time in the source monitor but not set it using the standard API.  Setting requires the notoriously unsupported QE DOM (works great though!)

• It's possible to set the active projectItem in the sourceMonitor, but there's no direct way (that I'm aware of) to get it.  It's possible to get both the projectItem and playhead time from the activeSequence.  Our solution was to make strict use of multicam source clips, which was perfect for this project.  But our solution is not for everyhone.

Ultimate takeaway:

Adobe's underlying architecture is positioned not just to outperform Avid's ScriptSync but far outperform it: Greater ease of use, greater flexibility of UI, ability to work with industry standard script sources like Final Draft.  BUT the limitations of the API can undermine that potential.

Request:

Please give more attention to the API development.

IMHO custom automation is among the more exciting and empowering concepts in post production, and Adobe is onto it like no other platform.

You should post this on the Premiere Pro Public Beta forum, which is where all the discussions really on the new transcript process development are taking place. And the engineers do follow and respond over there.

This forum is for peer to peer help within Premiere Pro.

Neil