Reconstruct An Edit From A Reference
You have a finished or approved reference video, but the timeline behind it is missing. Perhaps a trailer was cut from watermarked proxies, an offline editor sent only a render, or the online edit must be rebuilt from clean camera originals. The reference shows the correct shots and edit points; your task is to find those moments in the available source media and reconstruct them as editable Premiere clips.
The library workflow Reconstruct Edit From Reference performs that first conform pass. It searches the original media you select in the Project panel, identifies the most likely source interval for every reference shot, places reliable matches on a target video track, leaves uncertain results reviewable, and writes a durable analysis report.
This recipe uses Automation Agent for Adobe Premiere. Start with Set Up Your AI if the panel is not installed yet. The ready-made workflow itself uses deterministic image analysis and does not require a Workflow AI provider.
The Complete Reference-Conform Workflow
The finishing tools are separate because each also solves a useful problem on its own. For a complete reconstruction, use only the stages your material needs:
| Stage | Tool | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Find shot boundaries | Detect Scene Edits In Selected Clips or the preparation option inside Reconstruct Edit From Reference | The reference is one flat rendered clip rather than already split at every cut. |
| 2. Find and place source shots | Reconstruct Edit From Reference | The original clips are not yet on the target track, or you do not know which source intervals were used. |
| 3. Refine source timing | Slip Clips To Match Reference | The correct source clips are present, but their visible frames do not align exactly with the reference. |
| 4. Recover crop and placement | Match Clip Framing To A Reference | The edit timing is correct, but Position and Scale do not reproduce the approved framing. |
Reconstruction often finds the correct frame already. Slip matching remains useful for manually assembled rough conforms, difficult matches, or a separate verification pass. Framing recovery is optional and independent of source-shot retrieval.
Fastest Path: Run The Library Script
- Install the FFmpeg and Python/OpenCV Runtime Packs.
- Put the reference on one video track in the active sequence. The default is V2.
- Keep the target video track empty. The default is V1.
- In the Project panel, select every original source clip that the workflow should search. This explicit selection keeps both runtime and false matches bounded.
- Open
Library > Examples > Finishingand run Reconstruct Edit From Reference.
No live agent session or prompt is required. The matching, confidence policy, placement, markers, cleanup, and report format are frozen into the reviewed library workflow.
The recommended mode requires an empty target track. If you explicitly choose Overwrite target clips, the workflow clears that target before rebuilding it. Canceling after the clear can leave a partial conform, so test the workflow on a duplicate sequence until the setup and selected source scope are correct.
Reference Preparation
Choose one of two modes when the workflow starts:
- Already cut reference (Recommended) expects a separate reference timeline clip for every shot. Use this when Scene Edit Detection has already been run or the reference was assembled from individual clips.
- Flat reference: detect scene edits first expects exactly one reference clip and runs Premiere's native Scene Edit Detection before matching. The flat clip is split in the timeline, then the workflow relists the newly created segments and uses them as reference shots.
If you want markers or Project-panel subclips instead of timeline cuts, run the separate Scene Edit Detection recipe.
Confidence, Placement, And Review
For each reference shot, the matcher samples the rendered reference, searches cached descriptors from the selected sources, verifies multiple frames, and refines the best candidate to a frame-aligned source interval.
The default policy places only high-confidence matches:
- Green markers identify automatically confirmed matches that were placed.
- Yellow markers identify plausible but ambiguous matches. They remain gaps by default; you can explicitly choose to place and mark them.
- Red markers identify shots without a reliable usable placement or a failed result.
Marker comments include the shot, source, confidence score, runner-up separation, and placement outcome. The selected working folder also receives a JSON result report with the complete analysis and outcome data. Reusable source indexes remain cached there, so later runs with the same media do not need to decode the full sources again.
Expected Result In Premiere
The target track contains editable video clips with timeline boundaries matching the reference shots and explicit source in/out ranges from the selected originals. No audio is placed in this first version. Uncertain shots remain visibly marked rather than being silently guessed.
Review the conform in this order:
- Check red and yellow markers and fill or correct any gaps.
- Compare source timing against the overlapping reference. Run Slip Clips To Match Reference if a clip needs frame-level adjustment.
- Compare crop and composition. Run Match Clip Framing To A Reference when Position or Scale must be recovered.
Limitations And Performance
- Reference segments and source candidates must be direct, online media files readable by FFmpeg. Nested sequences, generated media, offline clips, and ambiguous multicam interpretations are not supported.
- Every reference segment must come from one direct media file. Timeline-only effects are visible only if they are baked into a rendered reference.
- Speed changes, reverse playback, time remapping, dissolves, and other non-hard transitions are not reconstructed.
- The workflow reconstructs video only. Audio conform is not yet included.
- Heavy crop or reframing can reduce retrieval confidence. Use the dedicated framing workflow after the correct source shots are present.
- Long sources can take several minutes to index on the first run. Cached repeat runs are much faster, but frame-level verification still performs random-access decoding in the source media.