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Free, open-source tool to turn paper edits into Premiere Pro sequences automatic
Hey everyone,
Many of us know the grind of getting a paper edit from a producer and then having to manually hunt down each clip in the timeline to piece together a rough cut. It’s a tedious but necessary part of the job, especially in documentary and interview-heavy projects.
To make this process a whole lot faster and less painful, I’ve been working on a little command-line tool called Sheetscut. And I’m excited to share it with you all – it’s completely free and open-source.
What it does
In a nutshell, Sheetscut automates the process of turning a producer’s paper edit (a simple text document with selected quotes) into a ready-to-edit sequence in Premiere Pro. You feed it a word-level JSON transcript and your paper edit, and it generates an FCP XML file that you can import directly into Premiere.
How it works:
The tool matches the text from the paper edit to the word-level timecodes in your transcript. This means it can create a sequence with precise cuts, saving you hours of manual work.
Key Features:
I’ve tried to build in features that would be genuinely useful for an editor’s workflow:
• Fuzzy Matching: If there are small typos or differences between the paper edit and the transcript, the tool will still try to find the best match and flag it for you to review.
• Error Slugs: If a line of text can’t be matched at all, it will insert a visible “error slug” in the timeline with the unmatched text, so you don’t lose track of anything.
• Continuous Mode: This is a feature I’m particularly proud of. When you use this mode, it will merge clips that are continuous in the source and add markers at the actual jump cuts. This makes it really easy to see where you need to add B-roll or other cutaways.
It’s Free and Open-Source:
I want to be super clear about this, as the mods requested: this is a free tool. It’s released under the MIT license, which means you can use it, modify it, and share it as you see fit. It also has zero external dependencies, so it’s a lightweight and simple install.
Getting Started:
You can find the tool and all the documentation on GitHub:
https://github.com/mrescandon/sheetscut
Installation is simple with pip:
pip install sheetscut
I’m really keen to get feedback from the community, so please feel free to try it out, submit issues, or even contribute to the project if you’re so inclined.
Hope this helps some of you on your next project!
Cheers,
Paul (A fellow editor)
NOTE: Currently Adobe only supports exporting JSON transcripts as of their current Beta version. There is also a current bug in Beta that breaks transcription generation. As of Jan 2026, to use this tool, you’ll have to generate the transcript in a stable version of Premiere, then import the transcript file into Premiere Beta, then output again from Premiere Beta which produces a word-level JSON transcript. It’s a bit of a hassle but it’s a work around that works for now, until Adobe fixes the transcript bug in beta or they push out JSON transcripts to their stable release.
github.com
GitHub - mrescandon/sheetscut: Convert producer paper edits into Premiere Pro sequences
Convert producer paper edits into Premiere Pro sequences - mrescandon/sheetscut
replied 3 months, 2 weeks ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
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3 Replies
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Hi, this is great news, thanks. Is it possible that you can show us a sample workflow, or is there anywhere that we can watch a tutorial about it? How to format the text files, etc.
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Hey there Devrim,
I don’t yet have a video yet on the command line workflow but that’s a great idea – I’ll be sure to make one.
What I do have is a tutorial video for a sister product I’m launching soon called Smart Editor – which will be part of a suite of tools for editors that will include a front end for Sheetscut. You can see it in action and at the end of the video Sheetscut comes into play to make the actual XML that gets imported into Premiere. Check it out and let me know if you have any questions.
https://vimeo.com/1161149551/6a3de1c344?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
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Thanks, checking it now, and I will try to use it as soon as I have time.
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