How to automatically rename clips based on content!

Report · Jun 23, 2017

My workflow before,

Since I am the only editor within our small non-profit organization, I have to take on multiple hats as we are heavy with multimedia.

There was a time that it took two hours to listen, label and rename clips for a thirty minute interview.

Listen to the content, cut the raw footage while I go and rename the new clip and color code it to a specific subject.

Most of the time was spent on typing and renaming clips.

So I figured out a new system that is pretty accurate and saves most of the time from logging clips.

New workflow.

1. Saved a preset with Adobe Media Encoder that transcribes my raw interview and uploads it to YouTube.

2. YouTube does it's thing by automatically creating sub titles for my footage that I can download into SRT format. It's more accurate then the old < CS6 versions that had the Analyse Content feature.

3. Ive created a script that formats the SRT into an importable comma separated .CSV Microsoft Excel document.

2

00:00:29,210 --> 00:00:37,870

and the first name is<font color="#E5E5E5"> Tori t 0 RR I and</font>

3

00:00:33,558 --> 00:00:37,869

my last name is<font color="#E5E5E5"> Lawford l 0</font>

4

00:00:42,340 --> 00:00:48,630

today's day is

5

00:00:44,740 --> 00:00:48,630

july there

Into

00:00:29:00	and the first name is Tori t 0 RR I and
00:00:33:00	my last name is Lawford l 0
00:00:42:00	today's day is
00:00:55:00	what brought me entities
00:00:59:00	and what brought me in the team
00:01:04:00	a very life long search for happiness
00:01:07:00	I've searched for happiness in a lot of
00:01:14:00	I grew up
00:01:17:00	do drugs with my family I grew up just

I found a delightful tool called Keyboard Maestro which I programmed a sequence of hotkeys, mouse click to go line by line down the Microsoft Excel sheet find and select the timecode in premier, adds markers with names and adds onto the clips according to Column B in the excel sheet

So the entire orchestrated process is simply amazing when I hit the hotkey and it automatically finds and renames clips to what the interview is talking about.

This is only sped up about twice the speed. Yes it's really that fast!

So what took two hours to do, takes about five minutes on a thirty minute long interview.

I thought I would share this. If people think this is a awesome workflow and like to see more of an in depth process and even releasing the script; please ask in comments!

[Moderator note: title edited for clarity]

Report · Jun 23, 2017

This is a great post ... and there's been people asking for this sort of workflow every so often for several years now. Although I'm wondering ... does this actually rename or subclip, or put markers in place so you can then grab sections based on the markers, as it seems it does from your description?

I was wondering if say Meg The Dog or Jim_Simon or shooternz or RameezKhan or kulpreet singh would be interested in taking a look at this process.

Neil

Report · Jun 23, 2017

Thanks for the feedback!

Here's what the final sequence looks like. It places clip markers within the clips.

The markers are given names after the spoken wording at that timecode. Since it is using a macro keyboard shortcut program, any combination of shortcut keys, including sub clips, could be applied in theory.

The way I work is; pre-cut basic edits, lets say 50 edits in a twenty minute interview, then I color code the clips based on the content.

If the person is giving their introduction, I color it blue, if the person is talking about how circumstances led to a grand adventure, I color code it as purple.. and so forth..

Then I apply this workflow as I mentioned in this post so that all 50 clips get a pretty good visual/textual reference so I can skip ahead and read it like a story book without having to rely on track names, color codes and be a little bit frustrated what my thought process was when I sorted through those fifty clips days or even months from when I did.

Report · Jun 23, 2017

This is a most interesting process ... I'll definitely want to see the full details ...

Neil

Report · Jun 23, 2017

I'll write a more step by step process in a few days if anyone is interested.

Its a work in development with a few catches. One of them being, there's normally several timecodes referencing the same clip and I have it to add in addition the spoken words separated by a comma and a space when it renames a clip in the sequence.

This gets to be a pretty long clip name.

So, i'm gathering a list of little conjunction words that seem to be taking up space. I will tell the script to remove these words when it creates the CSV Excel file leaving a more basic "straight to the point" clip name.

This clip name

"from God since I was a little kid but at, about like 14 years old I fell away from, the church completely and avoided the, call in my life he had he hadn't spoken, to me on many occasions and said that I, had refused all of it because then I, would have had to bear some, responsibility with my life and so now I"

Would become this

"God since I little kid , about 14 years old fell away, church completely avoided, call life he spoken, me on many occasions, had refused all because, would have had bear some, responsibility with my life"

I'm just doing my first interview edit as I completed this workflow fully yesterday. I screamed like a little girl when it actually worked!! And I knew I just had to share it.

Report · Jun 23, 2017

Thanks for sharing such an amazing and time-saving workaround, Openskies2009.

I will surely try this at my end and I will share this in-house.

Much appreciated!

-Kulpreet Singh

Report · Aug 03, 2017

I am developing a script that will do the macro business automatically, skipping out the need for Keyboard Maestro.

Instead, all you need to do is upload a Final Cut XML file, a sub file and the script will automatically place markers within the main audio interview file. If anyone is still interested in me releasing the script to the public, let me know by commenting on this thread and I will consider it.