Automation Blocks - Pulling from Spreadsheet

[m1jackson]

It's been a few minutes since I had a question as I've been working on a project where Automation Blocks absolutely changed my life and productivity level. I'm back trying to clean up some scripts and improve them where possible.

So, first thing I'd like to do is pull info from multiple columns of a selected line in a spreadsheet. We've gone thru a bit of this back here.

I've got a spreadsheet that has a lot of data export from ShotGun pertaining to the shot.

When I make my selection in the input dialog for the show, how do I pull data from other columns in the "line" to make variables of them and apply them? i.e. I'd like to set variables for Frame Rate, Output X, Output Y, etc.

It seems like I should know this, but I'm drawing a blank. Thanks for you help.

I plan on sharing a video once I've wrapped up my changes now that the show is done! Is there an update planned, and if so, when can we hope for it?

Mike

[Mathias Moehl · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike,

in a nutshell, after the user made his choice, you need to loop over all rows of the spreadsheet again until you found the one that the user has chosen.

For that, you could duplicate your green "for each row in spreadsheet" block to loop over the entire spreadsheet again after you've shown the dialog.

In this duplicate, instead of the statement, which insert the "column project name" into the "name project" list, you use an if statement to check if "colum project name" equals "name project". If they are equal, you know that you are currently looking at the row which the user has chosen in the dialog. Hence, inside the if-block you can then do everything you want to do for that chosen project (and all the variables initialized in the green block will then have the values of that row).

I am currently very busy preparing the release for Automation Blocks for Premiere Pro. After that, new features for Ae could be an interesting next topic again 🙂

[m1jackson]

Mathias,

I got it to work and wanted to share what your answer looked like for others.

I've got a lot of variables with so I broke them into functions to keep it a little easier to look at. The four "set Project" functions pull from the main spreadsheet and write out "save settings" to the preferences for use later by other scripts.

Since I've got you here and you might be looking for interface feedback for the next version, please...

• Add snaping to a grid as an option.
• Add grouping of objects. The above group as an example would be something I would want to group and move together. Kind of like a group node in Nuke or Fusion.
• It'd be great to get some more description in the popout of each "item". Right now, when there are a lot of items, I can't tell where I'm inserting, cause they're all just "Item"

As always thank you for your input. I look forward to sharing more soon.

[Mathias Moehl]

This is very interesting feedback, Mike! Thanks a lot - also for sharing your solution 🙂