Starting up with SDK for CS5 (premiere)

Question

Hello everyone.
First of all, I apologize for my english. And also for my possible lacks of knowledge about this matter, I am a completely newbie.
I want to develop an exporter plugin for Premiere Elements 9. I have downloaded the trial version and also the complete SDK.
I have successfully built SDKExporter project, read the SDK guide (as much as I could without getting lost at some point...) and follow the instructions about where to place my *.prm file (ExporterSDK.prm). In my case, I guess it is in xxxxx(InstallFolder)\Adobe Premiere Elements 9\Plug-ins\es_ES.
The application seems to load the plugin (I put a "DebugBreak();" call and it is hit), but I can´t find exactly how this plugin "shows up" in the application GUI. For what I know (please forgive me If I am wrong) I should be seeing something in the "SHARE" option (does it replace old Export menu option?) related to this plugin, correct?
Is there any doc, besides CS5 SDK guide, that can help us in the "getting started" procedure?
Please, any clue will be highly appreciated.
Thanks for the support.
Kind regards.

Answer 1

Hello again.
Thanks for your response.
Right now I have been able to finally got the exporter SDK plugin working on Premiere Elements 9. I am going to write a guide in case it helps potentially users who wants to start with the SDK.
1) Open the project with Visual Studio and change the binary to 32 or 64 bit (thanks for this tip!)
2) Build the project. You can copy the ExporterSDK.rpm file to the Plugin folder of Premiere Elements by yourself or set an environment variable (PREMSDKBUILDPATH) to that folder. In my case, I have it in  xxx\Adobe Premiere Elements 9\Plug-ins\Common.
3) Create a folder for your preset, so Premiere Elements can recognize your exporter under the "Sharing" tab (It seems like 'export' option under the file Menu is always disabled, strange). The folder should be Adobe Premiere Elements 9\sharingcenter\Presets\pc\OTHERS\YourCompanyName.
4) Now here comes the best part. There must be a *.epr file in that location, pointing to the correct exporter object (which is ExporterSDK in our case). If you open up any existing presets you will see a xml-style file, hardly to be re-created from scratch if you want to create a new one for your exporter. What to do here? Install Adobe Media Encoder (it comes with Flash product).
5) Once Flash is installed, copy ExporterSDK.rpm into Flash plugin folder (in my case, C:\Archivos de programa\Adobe\Adobe Media Encoder CS5\Plug-ins\common)
6) Open Media Encoder.
7) Add a video and choose "SDK File" in the Format combo.
8) Press Ctrl + E (export).
9) In the next dialog, select custom adjustment and click on save button (there is an icon for that, a floppy drive).
10) Set the name you want.
11) Now look for the *.epr file in the folder C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Datos de programa\Adobe\Common\AME\5.0\Presets (sorry for the spanish names). Be carefull as this folder may be hidden in your system.
12) Happily, copy this generated *.epr file into folder created in step 3.
With these steps, you should be able to see your exporter in the Sharing tab, in PC option (a list box will appear saying 'others', that´s where our exporter shows up!).
Now you can set any BP in your VS ExporterSDK project, attaching to Adobe Premiere Elements process. Isn´t that great, finally?
From this point there is a huge way to move on, but at least it is possible to study how the exporter interacts with Elements, and also to analyze the classes used.
I hope this post will help anyone.
Thanks again for the support.
Kind regards.