Renaming a clip selected in the project panel?

[zacharyb86430634]

Hi, I'm new to coding in any form so forgive the simple question. i wanted to create an extension for Premiere/Prelude that would help me rename clips. I haven't had any trouble with the HTML/Javascript part of this, and I have loaded the extension intro Premiere, but I can't figure out how to actually interact with objects inside of Premiere.

I have built a panel where the user inputs some information, and it's reformatted into a string. When the user clicks a button, right now an alert pops up with the string. What I would like to happen, is that when the button is clicked:

1. The currently selected clip in the project panel is renamed to the string generated by my extension panel.
2. The next clip in the bin is selected.
3. That clip is opened in the source monitor.

I feel like these should be relatively simple actions, but I cannot find any documentation on this at all. Several people have linked to PProPanel, but the only was scripts are renamed is by targeting the first item in a bin. There does not appear to be any way to rename a selected clip unless it is already in a timeline, which isn't particularly useful.

Thanks so much for your help!

[Bruce Bullis]

In PPro 11.1.2 (shipping), there is no way to get selection information from the Project panel. That may change, in our next major release.

Workaround = user puts things they want you to process into a bin named 'ProcessMe' (or whatever), and your panel finds the bin and processes its contents.

I don't understand why the 'next' clip (after the one you process) should be opened in the Source monitor...?

[zacharyb86430634]

I don't understand why the 'next' clip (after the one you process) should be opened in the Source monitor...?

So that I can review the clip before renaming it.

Sometimes I work as a DIT (well, glorified data wrangler, let's be honest) so I need to both prep the premiere project file for our editors and also review footage on set for the director in case we are missing coverage or there are technical problems in a shot.

Right now once I have imported footage my workflow goes something like this:

double click on a clip to send it to monitor, scrub through it briefly with jkl to make sure there aren't any issues, then rename the clip according to the information on the slate, which typically means copying and pasting a string of text, then deleting part of it to update the take and/or scene numbers. These are really fast-paced and low budget shoots so sometimes there isn't a slate, or the information on the slate is wrong, or it's not the first frame of the video so I have to scrub a bit to find it. If I just batch rename everything at once without reviewing, something will go wrong.

So I wrote a script that displays form entry fields for Episiode, scene, shot, take, camera, and reel. When I enter that information, the script automatically formats it to something like "Ep0307_01a_01_camA_r01" when I click rename, I want it to send that string to the name field of the selected clip, automatically change to "Ep0307_01a_02_camA_r01" and then open the next clip in the monitor for me to review. That way, If I see that it is indeed take two of the same shot, I can click rename and go to the next, but if they got it in one and moved to the next setup, I can change to scene 1b and the script will automatically reset the take number to 01.

It's a pretty simple little thing but it would greatly speed up my workflow. I'm sorry to hear that it's not possible right now, but I'm glad to hear that it is something you are working on.

[Bruce Bullis]

What if your button attempted to rename the projectItem, currently open in the Source monitor?

[zacharyb86430634]

Not quite the same, but that would definitely get me like 90% of the way to what I want. I think I could even just use some keyboard macros to do the rest!

I'll comb through some of the example code, but if you have any tips on how to rename the clip currently in the source monitor I would love to know. Thanks again!

[e_d_ · Accepted solution]

Hi zachary,

if you use

app.enableQE();

var curSrcClip = qe.source.clip.name;

var curSrcPath = qe.source.clip.filePath;

will give you the name (and the file path if required).

Now when combining this with the recursive search (searchBinForProjItemByName) this will give you the respective clip in the project window... and so forth...

I wonder if that's really a useful workflow or if it were more beneficial to get a tool like Kyno, which is more tailored towards your needs.

[Bruce Bullis]

Zachary, I was curious why Prelude's built-in ingest and renaming functionality don't work for you. Have you tried them? Where do they fall short?

Unsolicited praise, from a guy who helped start Prelude; Erik is right, Kyno is cool.

[zacharyb86430634]

Thanks to both of your for your help!

Kyno does looks very cool and I'm surprised I haven't come across it since I've been searching for a tool like that for some time. Unfortunately I need something that will run on Windows, but I am really glad you brought that to my attention.

Batch rename functions really don't work for these purposes. If I had twenty files that needed to be named sequentially, it would be fine, but that's almost never the case. If I get a card with the following clips:

ShowName_01a_01_cama_r01

ShowName_01a_02_cama_r01

ShowName_01a_03_cama_r01

ShowName_01b_01_cama_r01

ShowName_01c_01_cama_r01

(false take)

ShowName_01c_02_cama_r01 (end slated)

ShowName_01c_03_cama_r01

ShowName_01d_01_cama_r01 (but AC forgot to slate)

DifferentShow_01a_01_camA_r01 (because the guest in this show hosts another show, and they shot her intro since she was available)

ShowName_01d_02_cama_r01

...

10 unslated clips of inserts/pickup shots. I hope to god these are all at the end of the card, but they might be interspersed throughout.

That's a pretty standard media transfer for me. Now obviously one solution would be for the camera department to get their act together, but that's sadly not in my power. I also work with about a half dozen different crews on a regular basis, so even if I could standardize the process for one group it wouldn't do all that much good.

I think you can see how ingest/rename doesn't really work here. First, there aren't that many sequential takes in a row. And second there are always errors in production so I need to review as I rename. If I rename on ingest, I'm going to spend more time figuring out where the process when wrong and troubleshooting than if I did it by hand.

Also since I have your ear on this and you guys have been super great and responsive, first off I LOVE prelude so thanks a ton. But one simple thing could make it vastly more usable for me (I sound like a clickbait headline now)

In this ingest menu: there HAS to be a better way to designate the folder to transfer to.

For example let's say the first directory I need to transfer is

E:/ChannelName/ShowA/Episode07/02_video/CamA/Card01

And the second card I get needs to go to

E:/ChannelName/ShowC/Episode07/02_video/CamB/Card01

There's currently no way I know of to get to that directory except to click "browse for location" and click through like seven different folders. If I could just drag and drop a folder from the directory tree, or even just have a setting so that when I click browse for location the explorer panel opens to the directory that was currently selected. Then I could just go up one level and select the new folder.

I know that seems like a small thing, but sometimes I have days where we two episodes each of three different shows, all with 4-8 cameras. So that time digging through folders really adds up and doesn't need to be that way at all!

Again thank you so much! I don't mean for this to be a rant. I'm just passionate about this because it could be a really simple tweak that would make my job much easier