Categories

• Announcements

  Change logs of Dataclay software releases, known issues, and promotions

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  The Dataclay team has released Templater 3.7.1, which adds some brand-new features, such as our Metered Output Option and support for Generative AI Text. You can download Templater 3.7.1 from this link:
  

  https://assets.dataclay.com/Templater3.zip Enjoy!

  WHAT’S NEW IN TEMPLATER 3.7.1

  Templater 3.7 contains several exciting new features as well as an important change for those who use Google Sheets as their data source. It also includes UI updates and several bug fixes.

  New Feature: QUE Meter for Templater Output

  The QUE Meter is a new service for Templater that supports pay-as-you-go production of customized videos. You can now:

  Purchase Templater Rig to prepare After Effects projects for automation workflows.

  Purchase QUE Credits when you are ready to batch output customized video using your Templater Rig activation. Spot checking, replicating, and rendering consumes one QUE Credit per output.

  You can purchase QUE Credits for your QUE Meter at: http://dataclay.com/credits

  New Feature: File Picker for Google Drive

  Google has introduced a number of new security requirements that affect how Templater obtains authorization to read data to and from Google Sheets documents. As a result, the workflow for authorizing Templater to access your Google Sheets documents has changed with this release.

  After you authorize Templater to access your Google account, you will need to also launch the “File Picker for Google Drive” from Templater to grant access to specific Sheets available in your Google Drive.

  WARNING: If you rely on Google Sheets as a data source, you must upgrade Templater to version 3.7 soon. In the near future, earlier versions of Templater will no longer support direct integration with Google Sheets.

  New Feature: Support for Generative AI Text

  You can now use your existing AI service to generate synthetic text content for dynamic text layers. Enter a prompt directly within a text layer’s Templater Settings effect under the Generative AI parameter group.

  When Templater cannot map a value to a dynamic text layer, it will attempt to send the layer’s stored prompt to your preferred generative AI service and will await a suggestion that will map to the dynamic text layer. This feature currently supports:

  ChatGPT from OpenAI

  Claude from Anthropic

  User Interface Updates

  You can now set a preference to highlight the most recently previewed row in your Google Sheets data source. This can help you to better identify the spreadsheet row that Templater most recently processed

  A new set of preferences has been added to control the generative AI feature.

  The Templater app logo has been added in various locations throughout the UI.

  Other Improvements and Bug Fixes in Templater 3.7.1

  The offline help documentation in CHM format no longer ships with the Templater archive. Download the offline docs at: https://dataclay.com/downloads/templater-docs.

  Previously misinterpreted values for updating dynamic essential properties are now interpreted correctly.

  Offline license deactivation is now possible without having an activated license.

  SRT subtitle layers better estimate line count in paragraphs.

  Bugs were fixed relating to machine profiling on Windows machines during QUE Satellite registration by removing dependency on the wmic command.

  Improved Templater authorization implementation for accessing both QUE and Google Sheets.

  Fixed a long-standing bug where Templater would not interpret null values correctly.

• Data Sources

  Questions, answers, and discussions about data sources compatible with Templater.

  Google Sheets Local JSON Remote URL Feeds Tabbed Separated Values
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  @megan

  Thanks for getting in touch with us. We recently identified a bug in Templater 3.7.1 that is almost certainly the cause of this error message.

  To fix it, we’ll want to open the Templater Preferences, then click “Advanced” and uncheck “Layout engine” and “Time Sculpting”. Next, click on the “Bot” tab in Templater’s Preferences and ensure the “Prevent event script execution on Preview” is enabled. Once that’s done, we’ll want to see if the error persists. If it goes away, we should be able to reenable the “Layout engine” and “Time Sculpting” options.

  If we continue to see the issue after performing these steps, we’ll probably want to continue this conversation through our support channels, as we’ll likely need to get some log files from the system that might contain information that wouldn’t be appropriate to post publicly. If we end up going that route, you can email us at support@dataclay.com or post a new helpdesk ticket right here.

  Thanks,

  Jeff

• Dataclay QUE

  Topics related to Dataclay QUE, the optimal datastore with an API for Templater

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  @joevac

  Since Spot Check is considered a standard Templater Bot action on par with Replication or Rendering, there’s not really a way to keep it from changing the render-status to “done” when it runs. However, there may be some techniques that we could use to get around the issue that you’re describing.

  The easiest would probably be to add another value to each Job that indicates whether a Job is a Spot Check or a standard output. Once that was in place, you could modify the Zap to match both the render-status and the new value before running. That should have the effect of filtering out any Jobs that are run solely as a Spot Check.

  Hopefully that helps get things moving in the right direction. We might be able to make some additional suggestions on how to resolve the problem if this isn’t a feasible solution, but to do so, we’d need to get some more information about how everything is set up.

  Let us know how it goes, and we’ll see where we need to go from there.

  Thanks,

  Jeff

• Projector

  Topics related to Dataclay Projector (now available in Beta). Transcode, deploy, and archive your media outputs to streaming providers and cloud storage.

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• Templates

  Questions, answers, and discussions about preparing After Effects projects for processing by Templater.

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  @UncleMonty

  Unfortunately, at the moment, there’s not really a way to “freeze” assets in a project file in the way that you’re describing. This is mainly caused by limitations in After Effects, where third-party plugins like Templater aren’t provided with a list of what assets are needed for each render action.

  However, one suggestion that might help would be to break the project file up into individual aep files and then use Templater’s aep Reserved Column to switch between projects as necessary.

  This method has the advantage of keeping each file relatively small and streamlined, so Templater doesn’t have to swap out layers that are potentially redundant. However, if the file contains a large number of potential target compositions, it can sometimes be more trouble than it’s worth.

  Hopefully, that helps, but if you have further questions or issues, please don’t hesitate to let us know here or through our main support channel at support@dataclay.com, and we’ll be more than happy to help out.

  Thanks,

  Jeff

• Batch Output

  Questions, answers, and discussions about batch rendering and replicating re-versioned After Effects compositions.

  Rendering Dynamic Comps Replicating Dynamic Comps
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  @1337err

  We can take a look at the templater.log and templater.err files to see if there’s any additional information there, but from my experience, I doubt that there will be anything more specific than what we’ve already got. Unfortunately, AE tends to be a bit vague with its error syntax.

  However, if we can reliably re-create the error, we should be able to use the technique that I outlined in my previous post to narrow things down relatively quickly. In the past, I’ve done this by making a copy of the file with the problem, opening it, and bulk deleting 50% of the assets in the Project panel. Depending on whether the error persists, we should be able to logically assess which half of the project data contains the error.

  Once we figure that out, we can repeat the process by either restoring the deleted assets and deleting the other 50% or by deleting 50% of what’s left and checking whether the error reoccurs. By chopping out increasingly smaller chunks of the project, we should be able to get a bead on what layers are causing the issue without a massive amount of undue work. Hopefully that helps to get things moving in the right direction.

  Thanks,

  Jeff

• Templater Event Scripts

  Questions, answers, and discussions about Templater's automation extensibility and integration.

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  @RyanB

  Glad to hear that you were able to track down the issue. I did some research and spoke with some of our devs, and I can confirm that all write operations for both replication and render actions should be completed before any “post_cmd_job” actions are run.

  If you have any other questions, please feel free to let us know.

  Thanks,

  Jeff

• Templater Case Studies

  Examples of Templater used by creative studios, broadcast, and application developers.

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  David Graff, John Wirtz, and Brian Kaiser founded Hudl in 2006 with the goal of capturing and adding value to every moment in athletics. Using their computer science backgrounds, the University of Nebraska sports fanatics built a platform that would enable coaches and players to review, annotate, and share game video across multiple platforms and devices. Their hard work paid off.

  With 130,000 sports outfits subscribing to their software worldwide—including NFL, NHL, and NBA teams, and an exponentially growing number of high school teams signing up every season—Hudl recently secured $72.5 million in a single Stage B funding round for a total valuation of $250 million. They expect this fall to be their busiest ever with 30,000 varsity high school football teams subscribing at a minimum of $800 per year for their cheapest package!

  Several times a year, Hudl holds a company-wide event called Skunkworks, modeled after the fabled Lockheed Martin creative think-tank that produced some of the company’s most innovative solutions. One of their teams wanted to address the “cookie-cutter” sameness of the popular highlights feature favored by athletes and recruiters. Developers Casey Batemen, Joel Hensley, and Kelly Herrington discovered Templater Bot, and found the best turnkey solution for making their highlight reels standout.

  Hudl successfully integrated Templater Bot into its robust video automation platform, and will soon roll out the Video Goodness product feature — enabling every team or athlete to have their own customized ESPN-quality highlight reel created in just a few minutes. The feature is eagerly awaited, and should make a huge splash when it goes live just in time for football season.

  Templater Bot’s coding-friendly API and ability to turn huge amounts of data into highly customized and individualized bulk renders allowed Hudl developers to clear some of their most challenging implementation and logistical hurdles.

  We are blown away by Hudl’s ingenious use of Templater in their pipeline and wish them continued success! We look forward to partnering on more solutions in the future.

• Templater Bot Deployment

  Questions, answers, and discussions about deploying Templater Bot onto servers

  Environments Pulling Data Pushing Data API Development
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  @Tom10 @Jeff @Maris @Jon
  Had the same issue for our own custom renderfarm. When starting AE over cmd you can actually add a “-noerr” flag that suppresses this popup.

  So now we always start AE over a .bat file with this flag:
  start afterFX.exe -noerr

• General

  General topics related to Dataclay products

  License Management
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  @Jeff Thank you Jeff for the quick reply!
  I have just checked another project i have been working on today, and indeed on this project the templater settings effect remained on the target composition’s inner comps’ layers after creating variants. Thats indeed odd. I will come back to you, after i encounter that strange behavior again. Perhaps will be able to pinpoint the reason aswell. I thought thats just how it was coded - that its default behavior for some reason. Apologies for the confusion.