Premiere Pro Extension using ".exe" file

[avartation]

Currently I'm developing an extension for PPro that should use .exe file to make things happen. The main algorithm is written in python and works with actual video files and returns video in and out points as a result. It reads videos frame by frame, processes the information in pixel level...  and I'm thinking of making an executable from it and call it from extendscript to make things happen...

Is this the right way to go ? Or should I consider other technics like writing a plugin using the PPro SDK and call it from extendscript ? Is it possibe to access the actual video-files, read them, get pixel values with SDK ?

Thanks.

[johnpooley3]

Yes, you'll need the SDK for this: https://www.adobe.io/apis/creativecloud/premierepro.html

[avartation · Accepted solution]

Thanks for reply, John ! 

I would love to know why I should go with SDK ? It would be a lot easier for me just to keep it as it is. Anyways, I'm planning to distribute it and the only thing that worries me with the executable, is the security, the ease of cracking it, as the file will be visible and I should consider some security checks myself (like time restricted license file...). So is this problem solved with sdk ? Does Adobe provide the security part ?

Also looking at the documentation (https://premiere-plugin-sdk-guide.readthedocs.io/intro/premiere-pro-plug-in-types.html) I can't find the type of the plugin I need. What type should I consider if it should get access to selected videos (in frame, pixel level), process them, and return in/out points for each selected video.

Huge thanks in advance !

[johnpooley3]

If you're looking for Premiere to serve up frames to your application, you'll want to look into the Transmitters plugin type in the SDK. 

If you can read the files directly from the disk, you can probably get away with ExtendScript. 

Security: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/devnet/creativesuite/pdfs/SigningTechNote_CC.pdf

[Bruce Bullis]

If your extension operates directly on video files, then PPro is a poor platform from which to run your extension. 

To get video frames from PPro, you'd write a video effect plug-in...but that won't work for your case. You won't get the source media itself, you'll get rendered frames of the source media, with PPro's footage interpretation applied. Also, video effects are given no context for the frames they're asked to process; there's no way for your video effect to know the in/out points of the clip to which it's been applied. 

Conceivably, you could write a CEP extension (which would rely on JavaScript for its UI, and ExtendScript to drive PPro), which could also invoke your python-based external logic. However, again, there's no way for you to access unmodified sources, and if you were to get the path to the source file on disk and read from there, what you read won't necessarily match what the user is seeing in the timeline. 

Why is it required, that your logic analyze actual source media, instead of the media as the user has set it up in PPro?

[avartation]

Oh, I didn't see your answer, sorry :D,

I actually managed to make it the way I wanted, almote done... And yeah, I just went on with extension and my logic as a seperate application.

My plugin is meant to help the user to seperate the video to good, and bad regions, (useable and not usable...) and based on these regions it inserts the video to sequance with cuts and colors...

And the algorithm itself works with the raw video files, that's the reason I chose this way 🙂