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Inspiring
March 12, 2021
Question

How to get the Timecodes of footage used by a sequence, similar to an EDL's values?

  • March 12, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 1812 views

I am developing a plugin that shall generate a text file for the purpose of documenting the _used_ footage. It's for a media design company that needs to know which and how much "foreign" footage it used.

 

For this purpose, the plugin needs to learn the actually used range of frames, or their TCs, of the footage that's references in a sequence.

 

How do I get to that information?

 

I know how to learn of the original footage tracks, but I have a hard time determining the TCs, especially if the footage is embedded into the sequence at a non-trivial time scale. For instances, if it's using  speed-ramp, I cannot simply take the TCs from the track, as they do not directly translate into the range that they're taken from the footage (1s of play time in slo-mo) may mean that it's 10s in the footage - and that's the timing I need in order to know how much needs to be credited to the original footage.

 

When I export a sequence to EDL, then these TCs are right there, though! This means that there's code in Premiere that can calculate these values. The question is simply how I get to them from a plugin.

 

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2 replies

Bruce Bullis
Community Manager
Community Manager
March 12, 2021

You mention writing a 'plug-in', which are created in C++;  I think you're writing an extension, in ExtendScript/JavaScript.

 

You can get the source media in/out points from the trackItem object, but as you point out, there are complexities. 

Confirming: Even for time remapped track items, the values exported in an EDL are correct?

tempelorgAuthor
Inspiring
March 12, 2021

Bruce,

Yes, I mean an extension.

 


Confirming: Even for time remapped track items, the values exported in an EDL are correct?

 

Yes, that was my impression so far. Do you think I got this wrong, or are you not familiar with the content of EDL files?

Bruce Bullis
Community Manager
Community Manager
March 12, 2021

I'm familiar with EDL files; I'm surprised that EDLs offer full source timecode information, for time remapped trackItems.

Joost van der Hoeven
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 12, 2021

@Bruce Bullis can you assist @tempelorg?