Automation Blocks : Insert and Sort Timeline Clips by Label Color for Multicam Editing

[mica_7639]

I'm working as a professional wedding video editor and regularly handle multi-camera edits with 3 angles. I'm trying to automate my timeline structure using Automation Blocks to streamline the color correction workflow.

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My Editing Setup

• Camera 1 (Main Cam): Center camera — always goes to V1 (and A1 for audio)

• Camera 2 (Yellow Label): Cinematic — should go to V2 (video), A1 (audio)

• Camera 3 (Brown Label): Secondary — should go to V3 (video), A1 (audio)

What I Want to Achieve:

I need two Automation Blocks scripts

1. Insert Logic During Editing

When I select a clip from the Project panel:

• It should detect the label color (Yellow or Brown)

• Then automatically insert it into specific tracks (V2 or V3) based on label

• Audio should always go to A1

• This should work on the active sequence, at the playhead position 

2. Sort Logic After Editing

Once the edit is complete:

• Script should loop through all clips in the timeline

• Detect their label color

• Move each clip to its assigned video track

• No audio change

• Useful for organizing tracks before doing color grading (which I do per camera)

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What I've Tried

• Tried to build the "insert" block myself, but it fails with error:
  Unknown block type  pr_get_selected_project_items

• I also need to make sure the script works across multiple projects and doesn't break due to color naming differences or errors.

[mica_7639]

Hello Automation Blocks team and community,

I'm working as a professional wedding video editor and regularly handle multi-camera edits with 3 angles. I'm trying to automate my timeline structure using Automation Blocks to streamline the color correction workflow.

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:movie_camera: My Editing Setup:

• Camera 1 (Main Cam): Center camera — always goes to V1 (and A1 for audio)

• Camera 2 (Yellow Label): Cinematic — should go to V2 (video), A1 (audio)

• Camera 3 (Brown Label): Secondary — should go to V3 (video), A1 (audio)

---

🧠 What I Want to Achieve:

I need two Automation Blocks scripts:

:white_heavy_check_mark: 1. Insert Logic During Editing:

When I select a clip from the Project panel:

• It should detect the label color (Yellow or Brown)

• Then automatically insert it into specific tracks (V2 or V3) based on label

• Audio should always go to A1

• This should work on the active sequence, at the playhead position

:white_heavy_check_mark: 2. Sort Logic After Editing:

Once the edit is complete:

• Script should loop through all clips in the timeline

• Detect their label color

• Move each clip to its assigned video track

• No audio change

• Useful for organizing tracks before doing color grading (which I do per camera)

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:wrench: What I've Tried:

• Tried to build the "insert" block myself, through chatgpt but it fails with error again and again: and more etc error
  Unknown block type: pr_get_selected_project_items 

•  and more etc error

• I also need to make sure the script works across multiple projects and doesn't break due to color naming differences or errors.

[Mathias Moehl]

Concerning the second script:

This is pretty challenging, since there is no API function in the scriptinig API to move clips from one track to another one. All you can do is to insert a new clip in the timeline in the desired track (with the same timing and project item). But this won't preserve the effects and transitions applied to the project item.

[R Neil Haugen]

In that workflow, I would not grade off the sequence ... but first, do they have the camera white balance/exposure locked down, or do they allow either auto or continual changes by operators?

The answers would make a big difference.

For something like the ceremony ... where the color balance/exposure should be constant for all cameras, I would simply use one clip each cam to make a new sequence ...using Q/W to select a short bit of each that is comparable/same subject ... then grade "main" view, then match others to that one.

Copy each camera's Lumetri, paste to all from that camera in the bin. Delete the grading sequence.

But then, I also do 'bulk' correction before grading any sequence of multiple cameras ... do similar to the above normally using a chip chart shot from each cam, to get contrast curve and hue v hue to fairly close similarity. Then apply those to all clips from each camera. Which knocks off about 85% of needed 'timeline' work.

[mica_7639]

Hi R Neil Haugen,

What you’re suggesting makes a lot of sense, but let me explain my situation. I’m a freelance video editor, and I’ve already explained to the clients I regularly work with how the camera settings should be handled—we even use log profiles for better color grading. But the problem is that not everyone follows this. During the shoot, when the event is happening, there’s no time to match the white balance or exposure across cameras because the shoots and rituals are happening continuously. It becomes difficult for everyone to manage camera settings on the spot. Also, as you suggested, creating a temporary sequence to color-correct all the footage sounds good, but in our shoots, we have a huge amount of footage. For a wedding ceremony, there are 1500–2000 clips, which is around 300GB of files and 10–15 hours of footage. Out of this, many clips don’t even get used, and we only realize which ones are needed during editing—based on the song we’re using and the story I need to tell. At that point, I can filter out or remove the clips. If I color-correct all the clips beforehand, I won’t know which ones will be used and which won’t, which would be very time-consuming and take a lot of extra energy.

Thank you so much for your suggestion! I can try this approach on a smaller project. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

[R Neil Haugen]

For mass shoots like that, everything you do starts from trying to sort out the mess, right?

So, being me, about the first thing I'd do is create search bins on usage, simply to cull out the bazillion clips not used. That's a start. And from talking with a lot of people in both long-form and episodic/reality show work, this is a common issue. Colorists at times are given boxes of drives, with 30TB of media, when the timeline only uses a few hundred clips. What a freaking mess!

Next, if you can it's freaking useful to bulk apply changes. Even if just using say the Freeform view to sort some of a camera's clips into groups to apply the same correction to them.

ANYTHING to minimize doing clip-by-clip work down a timeline is worthwhile, even in Resolve.

So that's why colorists have become so beholded to going through clips in the Media Pool, and applying individual CM and other things, grouping, and all, to get as much done in bulk as possible.

Clip to clip grading is much easier in Resolve than Premiere, but even there, takes way too much time. In Premiere, you really must do organization prep work to grade.

And I work with a full Tangent Elements panel, which to me is another must in Premiere, as that not only handles color corrections far faster, but better, than you can do with a mouse ... and ... it can be set to do any sizing/rotation/position work of any screen element, clip, graphic/text, and of course, handle audio mixing as well with those marvelous twelve twirly knobs.

[Mathias Moehl · Accepted solution]

Concerning the first tool: I just added this to the Community Library for you:

Sequence/Populate/Insert Clips into Tracks of Active Sequence At CTI Grouped by Label Color.xml

It inserts all currently selected project items into the active sequence at the current time. Based ono their label color, they are inserted either in V3 (brown item), V2 (yellow items) or V1 (all other items). Here is the block code explained:

As you can see, I first sort the selected project items into lists. I do that, because then all selected brown items can be inserted into the active sequence using a single call of the "add pproject items" block. If we would insert each of them separately, they would all start at the current time and replace/overwrite each other. But now, only the first inserted clip in each track starts at the current time and the next one starts where the previous one ends.

Currently, Clips which insert their video in V3 insert their audio in A3, not A1. I think there is no way to avoid this, since the add project items block has no separate inputs for audio and video track (that would be a good feature request, though).

[Mathias Moehl · Accepted solution]

I also asked ChatGPT to create such an Automation Blocks tool now.
It took me a little conversation and the first two versions didn't work but the third suggestion by ChatGPT works, too.

You can see the full conversation with ChatGPT here:
https://chatgpt.com/share/6824a0d5-fcbc-8004-9328-33f07c0549de

ChatGPT uses the Premiere Pro scripting APII directly, therefore, the produced code is much less readable:

The ChatGPT tool only has the limitation that it only processes the first selected clip.
And very interesting: Also in this one the. audio is inserted always in the same track number like the video. And this happens even though the ChatGPT code explicitly attempts to insert in aTrackIndex 0 (i.e. A1). I think this is a bug in the Premiere Pro scripting engine, that it does not work to insert in a different audio track index. And if I remember correctly, that's why in Automation Blocks I didn't add this as an option at all.

I attached the tool created by ChatGPT, since I am not sure if they stay on the ChatGPT servers or are deleted there soon.

[mica_7639]

Thank You so much sir its working but now audio file is also importing i try unchecke the toggle targeting button and lock the track still audio file is inserting can i add a block in this script after inserting the clip delete the audio file of inserted/selected clip 
if its possible please tell me how can i do that

[Mathias Moehl]

Are you talking about files containing both audio and video, but you only want to insert the video component? Or are you talking about files which have only audio and want to skip those? For. the latter,  you could check if the file has video (use the get Attribute "has video" block) and only add the items to the list if they have video.

[mica_7639]

I'm not a developer, so I don’t fully understand scripting — but I’m trying to learn.

What I want to achieve is:

Insert only the video component of a clip, and skip the audio part.

For example:
When I select a clip from the bin (like an .mp4 file that contains both video and audio), I want only the video to be inserted into the timeline, based on label color (like V2 for yellow, V3 for brown, etc.) — but I don’t want the audio part of that clip inserted.

In the current script, the audio gets inserted (e.g., on A2, A3), but I only need the video.
Is there a way to remove or prevent the audio right after the clip is inserted?

Can you please guide me or help modify the script or can you provide one more script xml file it will help me alot ?

Thanks again for your amazing support and tools.

[Mathias Moehl · Accepted solution]

As described in this discussion,  unfortunately, there is no way to insert only the video of a clip without audio. But also in that discussion, @merlincinematic explains a workaround:
1. lock all audio tracks
2. insert the clips (this will insert the audio on a new track, since all existing ones are locked)

3. delete the new audio track again.

I extended the script from yesterday, such that it now uses exactly this workaround to only insert video.

You find it in the Community Library at

Sequence/Populate/Insert Clips into Tracks of Active Sequence At CTI Grouped by Label Color Skip Audio.xml

[mica_7639]

thank you so much it will help me alot amazing solution for that