Add prproj sequences into AME, via scripting

Question

Hi,
we're using CS4 and the "Watch Folder" feature would have been nice, if it worked on prproj files.
I tried to see what happens during export with a Sysinternals tool named "process monitor" but the log is just too big to make sense of.
How can I add a prproj sequence to AME (Media Encoder) from the command line, or via windows scripting host, or via APIs?
Our projects usually have just one sequence, or it has a known name. Since prproj files are XML, we could even have our own heuristics in script code. All I need is a way to feed a sequence from a prproj into AME.
Choosing a named preset from AME is okay. We could provide all encoding settings explicitly though, if that's required.
We need this because we have dedicated encoding boxes on the network and we could push a project (including video and audio sources) into a shared directory for the encoding box to pick up. Right now, we have to physically be at the encoding box, opening the prproj and exporting the desired sequence. It'd be nice to be able to cut and edit somewhere else and just push the encode job over the network.
Is there any way?

Answer 1

AME has no trouble at all understanding PP project files, and uses them regularly to do it's job.  Just not via the Watch Folder.  Sequences have to be manually set up.
Indeed! I should have added " Watch Feature"  to maintain clarity.
...AME cannot transcode a PP sequence from another machine.
Yes it can; we've done it and it works great! But even if it didn't, automatically pushing files to another computer's local storage is trivial. In either case, you then have to manually load the project & sequence, which gets back to the OP issue I think.
To crackwitz or anyone else who stumbles upon this, there may be a workaround. You may be able to write a script via extendscript in AE, and Dynamic Link to a PPro project (locally stored or otherwise), then render from AE. My trials indicate that AE renders our projects at 50% the speed of PPro/AME (a well-known issue). That said, the ability to offload the rendering to a non-editing machine is worth the tradeoff in our case (it may not be in all cases). There are additional things to consider as well, including encode setting inconsistencies between PPro/AME and AE. The part we have not tested is whether you can specifiy a sequence via extendscript. If not, this will not work. If we confirm one way or another, I'll post back.
It'd be great if Adobe could kick it up a notch for customers that need greater levels of automation and work-flow efficiency with regards to rendering. However, these types of features have been a need for us for years, so I would encourage anyone interested not to wait on Adobe for this, and experiement with work-arounds, and share what you come up with!