Smart Collect for Premiere Pro

Collect your Assets in One Click!

Smart Collect allows users to automatically collect and relink all the assets used in the selected Premiere Pro timeline and relative nested timelines with just one click.

Important: on CC 2018 and older, we recommend (before buying) testing Smart Collect using the trial version.  Some system configurations are not compatible with our extension.

What is the purpose of Smart Collect:

Smart Collect allows you to make a copy of the files used in a timeline, avoiding this way to copy all the non-used material. Furthermore, the copied material will be organized in a folder structure that mirrors the one that the user has created inside Premiere.

The Premiere Pro native function “project manager” provides the same feature, but it doesn’t keep track of the material used in the nested sequences, leaving to the user the time-consuming labor to write down one at the time all the nested sequences names used in the project, adding the risk to skip one of said sequences. Imaging the scenario where there are nested sequences inside other nested sequences inside others etc… the user should open each sequence and write down all the sequence names.

Using Smart Collect, the user needs only to open the desired sequence, click on the copy button and Smart Collect will do the job.

Update: you can collect multiple sequences with an easy and quick method, check the video at the bottom.

Smart Collect Features:

• Make a copy on disk of all the assets used only in the selected timeline.
• Save a copy of the project and relink its clips to the copied ones.
• The assets will be copied into a folder structure that will be the same as the one created in the Premiere project window. With this feature, you can import assets without the need to copy and organize them before importing into Premiere
• You can shrink your project by deleting unused assets and timelines

A couple of limitations:

• After Effects imported project: due to Premiere Pro scripting limitations, it’s risky for Smart Collect to handle these files. To avoid errors, Smart Collect will only generate log files (AE Files.txt), where you can find the paths of After Effects projects used, so you can backup and relink them manually. At the end of the copy process, a popup will remind you how many After Effects projects there are to relink. Always remember to relink, otherwise, they will point to the original files and not the copied ones. Check the manual for more info.
• Graphic essential template: due to Premiere Pro scripting limitation, unlike After Effects projects, these files will be ONLY copied, but NOT relinked. Smart Collect will generate a log (AEG files.txt) that shows you the path where is the copied template, so you can easily relink it. At the end of the copy process, a popup will remind you how many templates there are to relink. Always remember to relink, otherwise, they will point to the original files and not the copied ones. Check the manual for more info.

Quick history:

Initially, we developed this extension for personal use only. After a while, some colleagues saw the tool and said it was a feature they were looking for, so we decided to create a new, polished version, to publish.