Managing hundreds of similar, multi-camera projects

[wallacew]

I'm considering using Premiere Pro for something out of the ordinary and would appreciate help. 

In short: I need to make 500 copies of a project, replacing its two video files (clips) with video files that are unique to each copy. Can I automate that?

In detail:

I'm conducting a study that will record a pair of simultaneous videos (two camera angles) of about 500 study sessions. Each session's videos must be reviewed by our three experts, each of whom will annotate the videos to mark each time a certain event occurs. For the purposes of discussion, let's say it's each time a person in the video blinks their eyes. We will then compare the three experts' annotations and check for substantive disagreements, such as if one expert didn't mark a blink within a second of when the other experts did, and resolve those disagreements to establish a "gold-standard" reference of when blinks occurred.

I've heard of specialized tools for video annotation like CVAT that could be employed, but it seems they're all focused on computer vision and machine learning, which we aren't doing. We only need to mark times. So, Premiere, as a tool that I already know well, came to mind, and I think it would work well.

My idea is that each expert, working in their own multi-camera sequence, will use Premiere's sequence markers to annotate the events. We will export their markers to CSV files for our project's broader analyses. By putting three such sequences (one per expert) into a single super-sequence, all within one project, we'll be able to visually compare the experts' markers, as shown below, and if needed edit the markers and re-export them to CSV. This all seems great.

What I don't know is how to manage this process for 500 sessions without a lot of manual, error-prone drudgery.

I tried and failed at one approach. I created a template project using generically named video files (Camera1.mp4, Camera2.mp4), all in one folder. Using scripts at the OS level, I would duplicate this folder to create a standalone folder per session, replacing each's video files with that session's videos, renamed to the generic names of Camera1.mp4 and Camera2.mp4. See my screenshot below. I hoped that Premiere, when opening the new project, would use relative paths to pull in the same-named videos that I had secretly swapped in, but no, Premiere goes looking for the videos in their template folder. I could move that template folder to hide it from Premiere, so that Premiere would prompt me to find replacement videos, though that would still get tedious and be prone to error (too easy to pick the wrong folder's videos). Is there a way to get Premiere to use a relative path or otherwise prioritize files that sit in the same folder as the project?

Or how else could I automate the creation of 500 projects that are identical except for their input video files? Is this something ExtendScript, the C++ SDK, Team Projects, or Productions could help with? I haven't used those, and I'm curious anyway about those two collaboration services given the multi-user effort.

Thanks very much,

Wallace

[Mathias Moehl · Accepted solution]

You could implement your own custom CEP panel to automate such tasks with the scripting API of Premiere Pro.

An easier solution would be to automate it with my (paid) extension Automation Blocks for Pr.
WIth Automation Blocks, you could create a custom automation which loops over all files of your root folder and subfolders and for each of them check if it is a prproj-File. If it is a prproj file, Automation Blocks could first open the project file and then replace the two footage item's media paths with the ones you want (you should be able to construct the file paths of the desired footage files from the project file path using the Replace in File Path block, to replace the name of the file but keep the folder it is contained in).

[wallacew]

Thanks so much, @Mathias Moehl!. Automation Blocks sounds like just what I need, and I appreciate your explanation of how I would use it for this.

It also looks like any kid who's programmed in Scratch should have no trouble using your extension. 🙂 Is the resemblance intentional?

Thanks again,

Wallace

[Mathias Moehl]

Hi Wallace,

yes, the similarity fo Scratch is intentionally.

I wanted to make sure it has an easy learning curve 🙂

[wallacew]

Nice, @Mathias Moehl.

I realized a difficulty. Premiere's Team Projects looks very good for us (I gather Productions would be overkill) because of how it would allow each of our users to work in their own sequence within each of the 500 shared Team Projects, but I think that also creates a problem.

We have a mix of Windows and Mac users using personal machines, so we can't have identical paths. From reading Adobe's help on Team Projects media management, its machine-specific mapping looks useful for this once set up, but when each user opens a project initially, will they still have to browse to their local media folder? We would be back to error-prone drudgery. Can Automation Blocks help with this too?

Perhaps, instead of making 500 projects, I could stuff all 500 super-sequences (containing two 3-minute videos in three multi-camera sequences) into one super-project, in hopes that Premiere would set up the machine-specific mappings in a single step, but such a big project sounds unwieldy. 

Does this path trouble go away if we store our media files in a service recognized by Cloud Sync in Premiere's Media Browser? Our group uses Egnyte and its desktop sync app, but unfortunately Egnyte doesn't show up in my Cloud Sync (screenshot below). Dropbox does appear, which is odd given that the two services seem to have equal standing on my Mac as cloud storage services, with files in ~/Library/CloudStorage. 

Or is Frame.io the solution? I haven't tried it.

Thanks,

Wallace

 

[Mathias Moehl]

I only have limited experience with team projects. If you have everything in a single project, it sounds much easier to handle. You just have to share a single project and every team member just has to remap one media file and then most likely all others will be found automatically.

[wallacew]

OK, thank you, @Mathias Moehl. I will try one big project, and if that proves slow, I can break this into a few medium-sized projects.

[wallacew]

Hi @Mathias Moehl. Would you please help me with an error I'm encountering in Automation Blocks?

I'm trying to clone my template sequence called "Comparison" with nested sequences. For debugging purposes, I'm using your example script "Duplicate Active Sequence including Nested Sequences" with its default settings. 

If I uncheck "close nested sequences," the script works as expected. But with that checked, as I need, the console shows an error:

execute script
clone nested sequences of sequence \Cloning a multicam sequence.prproj\clone\bin\
cloned sequence clone nested sequences of sequence \Cloning a multicam sequence.prproj\clone\bin\P1 Copy
destructor final end point 'main script' reached
execution result:"sequenceObjectFromSequenceItem: item is no sequence (line 6)"

It seems to quit in the middle of copying the first of the three nested sequences:

I hope there isn't an incompatibility with my multi-camera sequence? The "P1 Copy" sequence is pointing to the "Multicam" object in my "\Template\source" bin. I want that object to be cloned into the new bin so that I can then replace the footage that it uses.

I've attached the .prpoj file (I imagine you don't need the media files).

Thanks,

Wallace

[Mathias Moehl]

Thanks for the detailed report. I looked into it and it turned out that the clone function had issues with sequences containing multicam clips and merged clips (which are both "kind of" sequences, but not exactly).
I just implemented a new version, which should fix this issue and also clone multicam and nested clips properly.

You can download the new version 1.1.005 of Automation Blocks for Pr here:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/d2i2o2yr51mgiks9ugcl0/Automation-Blocks-for-Premiere-Pro_1_1_005.zip?...

Please let me know if it works for you, too, then I will publish the update on the product page, too.

[wallacew]

Wow, thank you, @Mathias Moehl, for the quick solution! Yes, this succeeds.

Thanks again,

Wallace

[wallacew]

@Mathias Moehl, would you please help me with something else?

When I clone the sequence, the clips are not cloned; the new sequence uses the template's clips. I need the cloned sequence (and its underlying sequences and multicam items) to instead use a new set of clips that point to new video files.

I think I see how to do the second part by using your change media of project item, but I don't want to change the media used by the template sequence. I could instead start by importing my new video files into the project, but with nested sequences and a multicam clip, I'm not sure how to cleanly substitute those clips into the cloned bin.

What would you suggest?

Thanks,

Wallace

[Mathias Moehl]

Internally, multicam clips in Pr are sequences, therefore, you can replace a clip from a multicam clip using the

Set Attribute of Clip block. Here I replace the first an second clip of the multicam clip "Multicam" in the bin "Templates\source" by the project items foo.mp4 and bar.mp4 respectively (in the same bin):

[Mathias Moehl]

PS: If you wonder about the ::V2\1 syntax

This says "use the first clip from track V2". See here for details:

https://docs.mamoworld.com/automation-blocks/block-reference/prSequenceClips#accessSequenceClip

[wallacew]

Perfect!

Thanks so much, @Mathias Moehl! Your tools and your help are terrific.

Cheers,

Wallace