Hi, not sure if there’s a bug here or I’m just doing something wrong. More likely the latter.
I’m running PT Studio (25.6) on an Intel mac (Monterey).
With “use PT scripting API” enabled, matchbox auto-creates it’s own dedicated shot/scene track within it’s own dedicated folder. Which is great but as part of that it creates new clipgroups to display each shot/scene. Now the issue here is that these are new clipgroups for each separate event, so they aren’t healable.
I will often have to go in to my scene cut track to heal certain areas where the EDL is being a bit silly and telling me a scene is changing when it’s just going from one angle to another. Obviously that’s not MB’s fault, the media was logged incorrectly at ingest I would assume as you can read the “scene” changes in the burn-in.
Anyway, I prefer to make a giant clipgroup and have matchbox slice it up. This is how I always worked in MB 1. But when I deselect “create scene track” or the “create cut markers” options in preferences, nothing seems to change. The scene track is created regardless along with markers for each cut.
Subsequently, I disabled the API option just to see how it would behave, and it did then stick with my selected track, moving down the timeline with the MB window indicating that it was making a “cut” as it flicks through the scene numbers. However it is then not actually performing a cut to my clipgroup. It is just hovering over each cut point, declaring a cut has been made and then moving on to the next position.
Something is weird here. Possibly my machine, or a pref I need to tick in MB…
Any thoughts much appreciated!
Rather than heal you can just select the clip groups and group them again - it’s just as many keystrokes.
If deselecting “create scene/shot tracks” still causes them to be created, that’s a bug we will fix.
If it’s attempting but failing to do scenes when PT API is disabled - it’s another bug. Will fix.
MB does not pull scene numbers from the burn-ins unless you use the experimental “Split Into Source Clips” feature. If you already have EDLs loaded, MB reads the clipnames of all the stuff in the EDL and tries to work out the scenes.
Note that you can edit the formula used to extract scene numbers - it’s regex but LLMs can help.
Just been troubleshooting a bit more and realised that as I’m still on Monterey (my old mac can’t go any further), Avid says protools is not supported on this OS from 25.6 onwards.
Subsequently I have just tested for these issues in PT 24.10.2 and it’s still giving the same results. Damn.
Aha! There was an extra shortcut in PT under “separate at selection” which used Apple + E, in addition to the usual B key. I had disabled the Apple E one, as I figured I could use that key combo for something else as I always use B for actually slicing up a region. But clearly it was being used in script/automated processes like Matchbox scene cuts. Good to know!
Hi, I’m now on a brand new M4 Mac Studio but sadly still getting some issues.
If I de-tick “create scene track” it still makes one anyway and doesn’t slice the track that I had selected. To get around this before I turned off API, but if I do this now it comes up with an error about failing to to communicate with the matchbox helper and tells me to enable matchbox in the accessibility section of privacy prefs. I have un-ticked this and re-ticked it with no success.
the new API approach does not put cuts in a guide track - it makes clip groups for the scenes on the special mb_scenes track. With the API turned off it tries to use the dirty old key-macro approach with the helper plugin etc etc. eew.
Sorry, just re-read your question. Yeah, if you turn off the API you need to do the system-prefs thing where you give MB permission to control PT. Instructions are in the alert. You also need the helper plugin open and it might not happen automatically.
Sometimes you need to quit MB, delete that system prefs entry, then reopen MB and when it asks, check the box in the prefs. The new API approach is by far the better solution.
erm, not sure. I’m on a M4 Studio with the latest Sequoia and PT 25.6 (Studio not Ultimate). Leaving API on, de-ticking the create scene track option, run a scene track from video clips.
I’m gonna embrace the API method and just go with that method going forward.
Talking of moving forward, any idea how to get the scene numbers recognised from these rushes?
At the moment it is using the EP1 at the start of the clip so I end up with about 3 cuts.
I was suggested the following regex string to try: _SC(\d+[A-Z]?)(?=/|_)
But then it came back saying it couldn’t find any scenes and to check the regex! Yikes…
I dont speak regex but LLMs do.
Here’s a prompt suggestion from the User Manual which you can try or modify as you see fit. The suggestion I got was “(?:SC|)(\d+)[^/]*)"
Write a regex (ECMAScript flavor) pattern, suitable for use in a std::regex constructor, that captures one group, that being the first group of numbers after the Underscore or “_SC” and before the slash. e.g. EP1_SC04/051_TK03 becomes “04”
hmm no luck so far. Have been befriending chatgpt and it has suggested many variations of this regex pattern with no success. I just get “cannot find scenes” from MB..
The EDL is file 32 format which is common and mb deals with them all the time, so it’s a bit confusing..
For future reference, here’s a slightly better prompt for your example which people can modify to suit their own projects:
Prompt:
Write a regex (ECMAScript flavor) pattern that captures one group: the first group of numbers after “_SC” and before the slash. For example, in EP1_SC04/051_TK03 the captured group should be 04.
OK, I found a bug. If you type your regex using lowercase text it should work.
This will be fixed in the next release.
But clearly we need to do more to make this easier.
Next release of MB will also have a little text showing the result of the regex for the selected clip.
but LLMs can help.