"Media Relatives" in Premiere Pro

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
July 14, 2017
3 replies
3734 views

Looking for the equivalent result of Avid's ability to select media relatives: or more specifically to see either

a) A show list of all master clips affiliated with one or more sequences.

b) Select all media within a bin whose contents are being used in a sequence.

My understanding it there is no such command in PPro, but is there an approach that will get us there?

This topic has been closed for replies.

E

eikonoklastes

Legend

If you aren't averse to diving into a little macro scripting, you can quickly set up a script to reveal each clip in the timeline and set it to a specific label colour. Then you can select all the clips with the same label colour (Select Label Group) and bin them as you wish.

Executing the script on the whole sequence should not take more than a few seconds, depending on how complex your sequence is. Regardless, it will eliminate a huge chunk of manual work.

Prep work:

- Pick a label colour that isn't used by any source clip and assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

- Enable Selection Follows Playhead

- Activate your sequence, and rewind

- Turn targeting on for all populated tracks.

Script flow:

- Reveal clip in Project Panel

- Assign Label Colour

- Switch back to Timeline

- Advance to next clip

- (Optional safety measure) Assign Label Colour to the selected clip in the Timeline to make sure it was processed

- Loop

Caveat:

- You might need to do video and audio as separate passes, since Selection Follows Playhead doesn't select audio clips when there are video clips above it. Lock all audio tracks first, and then lock all video tracks for the second, audio, pass.

On macOS you can use Keyboard Maestro, and Autohotkey on Windows.

Here's a quick video of it in action:

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AhyOTAuOwz3Hl-J_hsWmORGn1Ilfuw

ETorrAuthor

Inspiring

eikonoklastes wrote
If you aren't averse to diving into a little macro scripting, you can quickly set up a script to reveal each clip in the timeline and set it to a specific label colour. Then you can select all the clips with the same label colour (Select Label Group) and bin them as you wish.

Basic idea is good. Macros, though they tend to be a bit limited and not so robust.

Better still, a bit of ExtendScript. It'll be more reliable and will allow you to use the same basic idea as you're proposing but using MetaData, from which you could leverage a "Search Bin".

Both the Macro approach and the ExtendScript approach would likely stumble on nested sequences and multicam.

Best would be for a robust Adobe-developed command, but a custom panel might well work in the meantime.

E

eikonoklastes

Legend

The macro can be used to add data automatically to the Description field. Place the Description column next to the Name column, and after the Reveal Clip, Tab over the Description field and add some text there, and then continue the loop. Set up a Search Bin to look for the text you added.

For nested sequences, go into the nest and repeat the script, I suppose.

Video of it in action (the search bin takes a couple of seconds to update once the script has finished):

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AhyOTAuOwz3Hl-MAhrM8XJMBMb_L6Q

E

excited_Genie16B8

Legend

I'm not familiar with Avid, but in PP you can see which clips are used (and in which sequences) by turning on the Video Usage column in metadata display for bins in List mode.

ETorrAuthor

Inspiring

You point to a truly brilliant feature in PPro, really powerful, and well-conceived. Avid would do well to come up with something similar. Selecting media relatives is a related but nonetheless different feature, and PPro would do well to come up with something similar.

It goes a little something like this: Select an item, any item, Master Clip, Sequence, etc. Run the command "Select Media relatives". Result: all clips that make use of matching media are selected. On the Avid side that feature is coupled with several others: the ability to filter out all but selected items. (A PPro equivalent might be achieved via the project search box, where instead of a key word it would trigger [selected], and only selected items appear.)

The overall goal is to see related things, and do global project management -- conform naming conventions, fill in / unify columns, remove or add label colors.

Perhaps what might be helpful in Premiere: something like a 'Flat Over Panel' that lists all your project items in flat form, no folder hierarchies. In that context a "Show Related" might filter the flat view to show those related items.