Close Premiere Pro native panels using extendscript

[Jonathan27219560ow5j]

Is it possible to close a Premiere Pro panel, such as the History panel or the Markers panel, using extendscript code running in a CEP extension? 

If this is not possible, is it possible from the CPP SDK?

Thanks

[Bruce Bullis]

No PPro API allows for controlling the display of individual panels.  

closest available work-around = panels can control whether PPro opens the workspace contained within an opening project, so you could 1. Save the current project (which will include the current workspace), 2. Force ON the "change to the workspace contained in this project" pref, then 3. Open a project containing  a saved workspace. Bonus points for 4. Setting the previously active project active again, and/or 5. Offering to restore the saved state from the step 1 project.

Stipulated: not an optimal solution. 🙂

what's the actual workflow you're trying to support?

[Jonathan27219560ow5j]

Actually I need this functionality in order to overcome an unwanted behavior in PPRO. If you add many markers to a certain track while the Markers panel is open, the UI freezes and sometimes the whole application can crash. I've reached the conclusion that closing the Markers panel before this operation imrpoves performance a lot and avoids the possible crash. That's why I want to close the panel during the operation and reopen it after the operation.

Any other advise? Maybe the PPRO team can comment on this unwanted behavior? Maybe I'm doing something wrong? I tried both adding markers in bulk or one by one and still I get the same behavior.

[Bruce Bullis · Accepted solution]

Yes, with the Marker panel open, ExtendScript-based marker manipulation suffers significant performance issues; thumbnails aren't free. 🙂

So, in my example above, you could 1. save the initial project with workspace, 2. open a different project containing a known (Markers panel-free) workspace, 3. fiddle with markers, then 4. re-open the initial project, and 5. close the different project. 

One much less complicated approach: Your panel could also pop a confirmation dialog (hopefully, containing a 'never remind me again' checkbox) that says something like "performance will suffer if you do this with the Markers panel open; continue?"

[Jonathan27219560ow5j]

Thanks 🙂 
I'll go the route of workspace manipulation.
By the way, if I'd manipulate the markers using CPP, would it work better?
Also, regarding the thumbnails, you could possibly not render / create marker thumbnails that are unseen in the scroll view - just like infinite scrolls tend to work. 

[Jonathan27219560ow5j]

Regarding the workspace manipulation, I need to create the markers on top of an existing audio track.
Say I indeed create the markers in a different newly created project:

1. How can I transfer the markers in one project to the other?
2. How can I create these markers on top of an audio track that will not be found in the other project? Would I be required to import the target audio track into the other project as well? 

[Jonathan27219560ow5j]

Sorry for the many replies. I can't edit original replies.
I've fiddled with the workspaces and projects. I now understood that projects and sequences are independent objects and so my initial question about moving markers between projects is irrelevant. 
However I've noticed that:

1. I have to close all open projects in order to have a project imported with its original workspace.
2.  In order for that to work I need to enable Window->Workspaces->Import Workspace from Projects - and I don't see a way to enable this option from the CEP extension.
   
   If the first finding is correct, I would have to close all open projects during the user's interactive session, reopen the project without the markers panel, close all open projects again and then reopen the project with the original workspace. That would be a bad user experience. All that assuming that my 2nd finding is incorrect.
   
   I would like to think that I can import a project with its workspace without closing all projects - that would make the ineraction smoother.
   
   So, are the findings above correct? Maybe I missed something.
   
   

[Bruce Bullis]

> So, are the findings above correct?

Your testing beats my forum speculation. 🙂