If you’ve already learned the power of scripting within After Effects (or any of the other Creative Suite Apps), you don’t need to be told how effective and reliable it can be when performing crucial, repetitive tasks. If your new to the scripting world, take my word now and I will quickly do my best to get you up to speed. Proof comes pretty quickly.
But we’re not here to talk about how neat this stuff is within any, or all, Adobe applications. Let’s talk Premiere.
There’s a stigma around Premiere + scripting.
Them – “You CAN’T script within Premiere. It’s impossible.”
Software Engineers – “You CAN script within Premiere, there just isn’t a direct way to access Premiere’s DOM within the application’s menu. However, with an HTML panel and Javascript functions passing through an Extendscript interpreter its totally doable. Just make sure to include all the details in a manifest XML within the CSXS folder and configure it properly for your current application version.”
Me – “Woah, Bro. Speak some damn English. All I’m hearing is that I COULD, but I CAN’T because I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
This was me in January of 2017. I had no formal coding knowledge besides beginner level courses in HTML and Javascript from CodeAcademy.com. Doing research into the idea of scripting in Premiere, what you just read above is really all I could find. Developer jargon and forums. Those were the best places to find information on the topic and I had no way of understanding it.
At some point, I gave up looking completely, but stumbled upon an After Effects Scripting course by David Torno on ProvideoCoalition.com. I figured it couldn’t hurt to try, and this gave me the foundation of using Javascript to make an Adobe program do exactly what I wanted it to do – in fractions of a second. Boom. I’m hooked.
However, I am a professional video editor that doesn’t use After Effects in my day-to-day. What use is this if I can’t apply it to MY program?
So, more digging. I found a link in the Premiere SDK Forum that lead me to a GitHub page where I could download a sample, dockable Premiere Pro Extension Panel. This page also included some cryptic information on how to customize this panel, and get my computer to accept it.
Well, luckily, this new template site, along with David Torno’s education, along with some support from the Premiere SDK forum, finally got me to a point where I can confidently say…..
Me – “Scripting within Premiere IS possible. It’s not difficult, it just requires a decent time investment to get past the learning curve.”
There is ONE MAJOR ISSUE, and that is, that due to lack of documentation on the subject, learning is very difficult. The access is the barrier. It’s one thing to learn something new. It’s an entirely different thing to learn something new when you have no surefire, reliable method of learning.
So here is my goal with this site.
To provide a location for Video Editor’s to build the foundational knowledge needed to increase their efficiency within Premiere Pro, via scripting.
That’s not to say this site will stop at the foundation. I hope to dig deeper and deeper, and provide documentation along the way, we just need to get you up to speed first.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a software engineer. I am a full-time video editor. I may use terminology incorrectly. I may teach coding methods that are not as “clean” as someone with an institutional knowledge of coding might recommend. An overwhelmingly large part of this site is for me to document things so that I can look back and reference them. This blog/vlog serves as both a learning space, and a log for my progression with this skillset. If this is all good to you…. Join me….
