Help with AutomationBlocks: Placing clips from CSV at playhead position

[Falko23171451lfj2]

Hey there,

I’ve been trying to use AutomationBlocks to streamline how I handle highlight cuts from longer videos, but I’ve hit a snag and could really use your guidance.

Here’s the situation:
I frequently compile highlight reels based on cut notes, which I store in a CSV file (with in- and out-points). I want to place these clips in the timeline at the current playhead position, rather than at the start of the timeline. This is because I often already have assets in my timeline.

I tried following the approach you suggested on YouTube by using the GetTime command to offset the duration of each insert. However, I’m running into some unexpected behavior:

• Sometimes, an clip gets inserted at random.
• Other times, gaps appear between the clips.

I’ve attached a sample CSV and a screenshot of my current AutomationBlocks setup.

Another issue I’m facing is that when the same clip is used multiple times, it ends up duplicated in the bin. I’d like to ensure that clips aren’t copied multiple times if they’re reused (Thats what I tried to accomplish in the middle part..).

Any advice on how to resolve these issues would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Mathias Moehl · Accepted solution]

Hi Falko,

your approach to import the footage item only if it does not exist, yet, looks like it should be working, but can be simplified. See this example I just posted a few minutes ago:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/automation-blocks-clone-a-sequence-change-it...

Concerning the gaps and wrong times:
1. does it make a difference if in the "add project items to sequence" block you change the option to "shift" overlapping clips to "overwrite"? Then you can see if the clips end up at wrong locations because they are maybe first inserted at the right time and then shifted for some reason.

2. Your coonstruct at the end of the script to loop over all clips of V1 at the current time to find the inserted clip does not look very reliable. Instead I would try something like 
set "insertion time" to "insertion time" + (outpoint -inpoint)

Just note that you need outpoint and inpoint in seconds here, so make sure to wrap both in "convert timecode to time" as you did it when setting the in and out point of the footage. 

[Falko23171451lfj2]

Hey Mathias,

thank you for your reply! Adjusting the math so that "insertion time" equals "insertion time" + (outpoint - inpoint) worked perfectly.

For anyone encountering the same issue, here’s the layout of my Automation Blocks setup. 🙂

[Mathias Moehl]

Thanks for sharing the solution 🙂