Automation Blocks - Automation for placing random music from specific folders

[Franz Tomandl]

Hi!

I had this request a while ago

And I was wondering if by now that's possible on Premiere Pro. I saw that there's a similar one to populate a full timeline from one folder, this seems quite more complex.

Nowadays, I prefer to use color labels on a random empty track and then replace those with the respective one. I.e.: Blue = Epic music, Pink = Action music, Brown = Sad music, etc

This system has made my workflow skyrocket in efficiency. If it could be automatic, it'd be even better. There's still some things I'd have to polish in this process, though. For example in and out points of the track music selected. I'm thinking that maybe I'd have to manually select the in-and-out them on each project. Alternatively, I'd chop the music to start wherever I always select it to start, or something like that. Or even having a full project with those already selected, I could copy-paste my colored track, let it add the music, and bring it back to the original project. I think that'd be the best solution.

In any case, this would help me in any way we could make it work. Sometimes I even use the same song in different parts, in case that's something it can be done (although, I don't see how), just throwing it out there.

Thank you so much in advance! 

[Mathias Moehl]

As far as I know, there is no way to access the label color of clips in a sequence with a script (see https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/change-label-color-with-api-in-premiere/m-p/...)

Therefore, this part of your workflow probably cannot be automated with scripts - and hence also not with Automation Blocks). If the Pr team adds api functions to retrieve the label color of TrackItems,  you should be able to access those in Automation Blocks using the Execute Code block. Here is an example of executing a method of a trackitem: https://docs.mamoworld.com/automation-blocks/block-reference/prOther#clip-remove

But again: As far as I kow, currently retrieving the label color of TrackItems is not possible.

[Franz Tomandl]

Oh. This just gave me the idea. Then this should be possible if I do my same worflow but making the script read the names, right? If each one of the colors also came from a different sequence name, that could work since it works with TrackItem.matchName

i.e.: if the blue one is also called "Epic music" and the Pink one is called "Action Music" and make those variables always the same for each project, couldn't that work? 

[Mathias Moehl · Accepted solution]

Yes, with the  Get Property Of Clip block you can retrieve the name of the clip in the timeline. Alternatively, you can use the Get Attribute of Project Item block to retrieve the name of the project item of that clip. You can also give this block a clip instead of a project item as argument and it will convert it automatically to the project item of that clip. This will only fail for clips which have no corresponding project items (like texts for example).