New to AdobeAPI, where can I find an API overview or help with custom importer

[simona89595811]

Hi Adobe team, and fellow developers,

I am an experienced C++, Python and Qt developer, and have recently been asked to setup some pipeline tools for an production.

I am trying to figure out where I can find some more information about the Premier API, as I have to code a custom import dialog, which will read from an csv file and then pull audio and clips, add them to tracks as specific time frames and resize the clips accordingly.

At the moment I have found the Premier CC 2017 SDK, but I am using the 2018 version.

Is there a CC 2018 SDK available? Will the examples work from 2017 SDK work in 2018?

I have not been able to find how one actually loads the compiled tool into Premier, Is there a document on installing custom tools anywhere?

Does Premier have its own GUI API for creating/hanling dialogs?

The tool I am developing will be written in C++ and is for in house use. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks,

Simon

[Zac Lam]

Hi Simon,

I don't think the importer plug-in API will be a good fit here, since you are working with multiple clips and wanting to piece together a sequence.

For that, you'd probably be better off either writing tool that converts from .csv to FCP XML, which can then be imported into Premiere Pro.  Or, if you want the tool to live directly in the Premiere Pro UI, you could create a panel from HTML5 and ExtendScript.

Here is the starting point for all APIs for Premiere Pro:

https://www.adobe.io/apis/creativecloud/premierepro.html

and here is a direct link to the panel SDK:

https://github.com/Adobe-CEP/Samples/tree/master/PProPanel

[simona89595811]

Thanks Zac,

I was taking a look at XML, but that requires that all files be imported already into the project, which is doable manually before running the import xml.

I was wondering, you mention the Premiere Pro UI, HTML and ExtendScript, does that require anything special to be implemented on a local machine? As this all needs to exist on a local machine, on site.

[sberic]

simona89595811  wrote

I was wondering, you mention the Premiere Pro UI, HTML and ExtendScript, does that require anything special to be implemented on a local machine? As this all needs to exist on a local machine, on site.

Nothing special needs to be implemented on a local machine - you will simply need to package your code using a special packager that Adobe provides. You could even sidestep that with some debug settings if you're really only looking at a single site use-case.

What @Zac Lam is referring to is called the Adobe Common Extensibility Platform (CEP). In short, CEP provides plugin-like features for Adobe products. Adobe refers to third-party CEP "panels" as Extensions or Add-ons. I mentioned "third-party" because Adobe themselves use the feature - several UI panels that appear in applications like Premiere Pro are actually CEP-based.

A quick description of the environment: CEP is built on NW.js, an open source project that combines the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) with a NodeJS implementation. This enables you to use standard web technologies to produce your panel UI.

This is all well and good, but how do you access application functions? All main Adobe products support ExtendScript - an Adobe-developed variant of ECMAScript 3 (roughly equivalent to late 90s/early '00s JavaScript, with custom APIs). There is a core set of APIs that ExtendScript provides and then there are application-specific APIs. To date, Adobe has done very little to provide decent documentation about what is actually possible with the APIs. You can use the ExtendScript Toolkit's (ESTK is a legacy application provided by Adobe) Object Model Viewer when an application (like Premiere Pro) is open to connect to it and see some of the application-specific APIs available to you. Community efforts (like the Premiere Pro TypeScript typings) have attempted to help alleviate this lack of documentation, but without true first-party support it's still hit-or-miss.

I would highly recommend checking out the CEP-Resources repo on GitHub, with particular emphasis on the CEP 8 HTML Extension Cookbook document. It covers much of what I explained above in greater detail and provides further answers and specifics about gotchas and how to begin developing content.

I hope this is helpful!

[simona89595811]

Thanks for the info, That will be a huge help. At the moment I am focussing on final cut pro xml, using Python to generate my xml file and then having Premiere import the xml. In doing so I get to import and create my sequence accordingly. the main problem I am having at the moment, is trying to figure out the bare bone xml data that is needed to import a file and then place it on a track.

I have files importing, and adding them to the track in order/duration that I specify, but for some weird reason when my files get imported they get scale effect added to them. It has something to do with some of the xml I have removed, but I am unable to pin point exactly what is causing it. I will keep at it, as it is nearly complete