Podclip

Podclip is open-source podcast multicamera editing for Adobe Premiere Pro, with no monthly subscription. It creates a rough speaker cut by detecting which microphone is active and routing each voice to a selected camera angle. Podclip duplicates the selected sequence before applying any cuts, so the source sequence remains unchanged.

Podclip is currently beta software. Test it on duplicate project files before using it in production.

• One microphone per speaker.
• One or more video tracks tagged with the speakers they show.
• Standard output mode: razor parallel video tracks and enable the selected camera for each segment.
• Per-microphone dB thresholds, cut delay, minimum speech duration, and lead-in controls.

Podclip does not currently provide transcript-aware edits, a preview-before-write screen, saved presets, or Premiere multicam-source output.

Podclip treats the timeline layout and voice-to-angle routing as its trust boundary. Each speaker must have a separate microphone lane, and each video angle must be tagged with every speaker it can show. Podclip makes deterministic routing decisions from audio levels and those tags; it does not use a transcript to infer who should be on screen.

• If an expected audio or video lane is missing, Podclip stops before duplicating or changing the sequence.
• If two or more microphones cross their thresholds, Podclip treats a microphone that is at least 6 dB louder than the others as the active speaker. Otherwise, it treats the speakers as overlapping and selects an angle tagged for that exact group, or the smallest tagged angle that includes all of them.
• If no angle covers an overlapping group, Podclip falls back to the loudest active speaker's single-speaker angle. If that mapping is also unavailable, it holds the current shot.
• When wide-shot selection is disabled, overlapping speech holds the current shot rather than choosing between speakers.
• Silence holds the current shot. Attack, release, cut-delay, and minimum-shot timing prevent brief sounds or waveform gaps from causing immediate cuts.
• If analysis produces only one camera state, Podclip stops without writing edits and asks the user to check thresholds, microphone isolation, and track setup.

For example, if A1 and A2 are equally active and V3 is tagged for both speakers, Podclip selects V3. If no angle is tagged for both, it uses the louder speaker's single-speaker angle when one is available; otherwise it keeps the previous angle.

Podclip uses Adobe's legacy CEP extension platform and Premiere's undocumented QE DOM for razor operations. It checks for the QE razor before duplicating a sequence, but a successful check does not prove that edits will behave correctly in every Premiere release. Test the complete scan, duplicate, and cut flow on a disposable project before claiming support for a new version.

The signed extension, copied into place the way the 0.1.13 installer does it, loaded in Premiere Pro 26.5.2 on macOS 26.6.2 with CEP PlayerDebugMode disabled. Before each release, test Scan Timeline and Build Speaker Cut on a disposable project and verify installation on a clean macOS user account in each Premiere version claimed as supported.

Adobe lists 26.5.1 as the current stable Premiere release as of September 2026. Adobe's CEP transition schedule sets December 2028 for CEP to be disabled by default in Premiere. A move to UXP will be needed for long-term compatibility; it is a separate migration because UXP does not provide a direct replacement for this panel's Node and QE usage.

• Adobe Premiere Pro 2022 or newer.
• macOS.
• No separate FFmpeg installation. Podclip includes LGPL-compatible Apple silicon and Intel runtimes.

Clone the repository and enter it:

git clone https://github.com/treydoe1/podclip-public-release.git
cd podclip-public-release

Allow Premiere to load an unsigned development extension. The exact CSXS version used varies by Premiere release, so enabling versions 11 through 14 covers the currently supported range:

for version in 11 12 13 14; do
  defaults write "com.adobe.CSXS.${version}" PlayerDebugMode 1
done

Premiere 26.3 uses CSXS 12. If Podclip appears in the Extensions menu but opens blank, check ~/Library/Logs/CSXS/CEP12-PPRO.log for invalidSignature and verify defaults read com.adobe.CSXS.12 PlayerDebugMode returns 1. Restart Premiere after changing that setting. It allows unsigned CEP extensions for this user, so leave it enabled only while testing development builds.

Link the checkout into the per-user CEP extensions folder:

mkdir -p "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions"
ln -s "$(pwd)" "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/com.podclip.panel"

Restart Premiere, then open Window → Extensions → Podclip.

Download the signed .pkg from the latest GitHub release, open it, and follow the macOS installer prompts. The installer includes Podclip, FFmpeg, and FFprobe; no Homebrew setup is required. The extension is signed, so Premiere loads it without CEP PlayerDebugMode or any other developer setting.

1. Arrange one speaker microphone per audio lane and the matching cameras on separate video lanes.
2. Open Podclip and set the voice-lane and video-angle counts.
3. Route each video angle to the voices visible in that shot.
4. Adjust thresholds and timing if needed.
5. Select Scan Timeline and confirm the expected tracks are found.
6. Select Build Speaker Cut.

Podclip analyzes the source media with FFmpeg, duplicates the checked sequence, opens that duplicate, and applies the edit to the duplicate only.

Quit Premiere and remove the development symlink:

rm "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/com.podclip.panel"

If Podclip was installed with the package, quit Premiere and remove that copy:

sudo rm -rf "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/com.podclip.panel"

If you no longer use any unsigned CEP extensions, you may also remove the PlayerDebugMode values you enabled during development. Those preferences are shared with other CEP panels, so do not remove them if another unsigned panel still needs them.

Run the complete local check suite:

./scripts/check.sh

The suite validates shell scripts, the CEP manifest, browser JavaScript, ExtendScript syntax compatibility, and deterministic cut-decision behavior.

SIGN_ZXP=1 \
ZXPSIGNCMD=/absolute/path/to/ZXPSignCmd \
ZXP_CERT=/absolute/path/to/certificate.p12 \
ZXP_CERT_PASSWORD='certificate-password' \
APP_SIGN_IDENTITY='Developer ID Application: Your Name (TEAMID)' \
INSTALLER_SIGN_IDENTITY='Developer ID Installer: Your Name (TEAMID)' \
./scripts/build-installer-pkg.sh

Build output is written to dist/. The package installs the signed Podclip extension, including both bundled FFmpeg architectures, into /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/com.podclip.panel with its signature intact. The build refuses to create an installer unless the CEP extension and its bundled executables are signed. External releases should also be notarized before distribution.

CSXS/                 CEP manifest
client/               Panel UI, analyzer, and cut-decision logic
host/                 Premiere ExtendScript bridge
installer/scripts/    macOS package lifecycle scripts
scripts/              Build, signing, and validation scripts
tests/                Deterministic Node-based checks

See CONTRIBUTING.md before proposing changes. Report security issues privately using the process in SECURITY.md.

Third-party software and trademark information is documented in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

The project's independent-development statement is documented in PROVENANCE.md.

Podclip is available under the MIT License. Bundled FFmpeg binaries remain under the FFmpeg project's LGPL terms described in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.