Technology spotlight: integrating with Adobe Premiere and other NLEs – part 2. News.
The NewsPlan NRCS client allows exporting news stories to NLE. A journalist finds appropriate clips in the MAM and adds them to the story’s “Resources” pane, where he/she can also change mark in and out points for the videos, selecting the sequences he/she needs. The clips selected in “Resources” are displayed as embedded objects in the story’s text. When the “Export to NLE” button on the main toolbar is pressed, an XML file is formed, describing the story’s clips, the project format (SD or HD), the mark in/out points and the markers of selected categories. The video editor’s completed project is then exported into a file ingest watchfolder and becomes available in a new MAM clip, in the same manner as with the AutoPlay integration.
There’s a quicker, more automated integration path available for faster editorial turnaround. If the “New clip” option is selected when exporting to NLE, all existing clips will be removed from the story. The exported XML file will have a generated Ext_id prefix in its name, and a new clip will be created in the MAM, with the story’s name and the Ext_id written into a special AM field.
When this XML is loaded into, for example, Adobe Premiere, a folder with the XML file’s name will be created in the Project. This whole folder will need to be dragged to the timeline, then the Program will receive the same name, and the rendered file will have that name as well.
The video editor puts the finished file into a separate FileImporter watchfolder which has Ext_id processing turned on. The file is attached to the clip created when the story had been sent to NLE, and the journalist can see that the video for his story is ready and no further action is required.
Many integrations and workflows that make our customers’ work easier have been created using the Ext_id mechanism, we’ll be glad to talk about some of them in future posts.
Finally, we’d like to mention our own NewsBase NLE’s capability to export its EDLs for use in third party video editing suites. This can be useful for workflows where journalists make rough cuts themselves and the final project is assembled by a professional video editor. Or for scenarios when the video editor needs to check the journalists’ work, either due to strict quality requirements or in the process of training new personnel.