Templater Bot Deployment

Stopping the Bot from saving the Project before every render.

Jeff — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 23:21:27 GMT

@Tom10 Great question. I did some digging, and the reason that we don’t currently surface that option in the UI version of Templater is mainly related to the way that Templater operates when generating versioned replicates. Due to some quirks in the way that After Effects interacts with project files, it’s necessary for Templater to save the project when performing a replication. However, it appears that this shouldn’t be mandatory when Templater is creating an output via the standard render modules. I’ll go ahead and put in a Feature Request to see if this is something that we can add as an option to a future version of Templater, but for right now, an Event Script is probably going to be our best solution for controlling whether Templater saves a file in UI mode once reversioning is complete. If you have any other questions, let us know, and we’ll be more than happy to help out. Thanks, Jeff

Bot Post Processing Script

ariestav — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 15:14:05 GMT

@pbretz The way to architect this would be to have web hooks that broadcast events on QUE, but in Sheets there is no easy way to do that. However, for sheets you might be able to use zapier to ping the sheet every so often to check for specific values in the render-status column. You could do the same with QUE and Zapier. We do have webhooks on the roadmap for QUE this year, but no set date.

Suppressing the new AE Crash Options after an unregular application exit.

tschoel — Tue, 30 May 2023 20:43:17 GMT

@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

Unusual terminal prompt interferes with the bot

Jeff — Sun, 12 Feb 2023 22:43:14 GMT

@viriato The terminal window in that screenshot is an indication that Templater Bot is executing an Event Script at some point during the versioning process. Typically, when a Shell Script is registered to an event, it’ll be wrapped up in a command named templater-event-cmd.bat and run at the appropriate time during the Templater process. If this window is causing the process to hang up or fail, it likely has to do with one of the registered Event Scripts in Templater Bot. In order to figure out what’s happening here, we’ll likely need to take a look at any Shell Scripts registered with Templater. We’ll also need to see how those scripts are being invoked to get a clearer idea of what could be causing the issue. If you’d like, you can post that information here, but if you’d like to get in touch with us directly so as not to share this data on a public forum, you can always email us at support@dataclay.com. Hopefully, with a bit more information on how things are configured, we should be able to track down what’s causing this issue. Thanks!

BOT, AEP's and Que

seth — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 18:40:49 GMT

@pbretz My understanding was that there shouldn’t be anything else to do aside from assigning the specific AEP to the applicable set of jobs in the campaign (functional parity with Google Sheets). If it’s not functioning that way, that’s something we’ll need to open a ticket on and investigate. I’ll dig into it and try to get more info for you. Seth

Using the Bot to Replicate

Ben Forman — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 16:54:54 GMT

Perfect thanks!

Dynamic branded placeholder path

pbretz — Mon, 17 May 2021 13:15:11 GMT

Thanks Jeff!

Bot stops working overnight

ariestav — Tue, 04 May 2021 20:42:05 GMT

For output filenames, using characters from a subset of all possible characters can eliminate those types of “breaking” errors on write operations. Best practice is to simplify the naming of output to avoid operating system language settings from being the cause of an error. For references to footage assets in the data source, you should be able to write the reference path in the way your operating system displays it, so special characters should work there. Can you be specific about which is using special characters — output or references, or both? Thank you for performing more troubleshooting steps, looking forward to receiving more information on that.

Cloud Install Issues + AWS vs PaperSpace

Jeff — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 20:36:30 GMT

@TYR Thanks for getting in touch with us. After doing a bit of research, I don’t think there would be any problem running After Effects with Templater on a PaperSpace instance. From what I can see, PaperSpace appears to be a virtual remote system service. As long as it’s able to run AE, I think you should be able to run Templater. The main difference between something like PaperSpace and AWS is really going to come down to flexibility. AWS seems to have a much more diverse selection of different system types depending on what kind of work you’re doing. I also noticed that PaperSpace seems to incline towards hourly pricing. If you’re planning on running an instance of Templater Bot, that’s constantly monitoring a data source, that could get pricey. As far as installation goes, you will need to contact Adobe to get approval to run After Effects on a cloud-based configuration. That’s just a limitation of the EULA for After Effects. When it comes to installation, a lot of it will depend on exactly how you’re going to have Templater configured. We do have some pre-made resources that might help. If you’re interested in exploring those options, I’d recommend contacting us directly at sales@dataclay.com to discuss pricing and availability. If you have any other questions, please just let us know! Thanks!

Bot Preferences

ZTH- NUKE — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 17:34:28 GMT

@Jeff - SUCCESS! Thank you, that did the trick. I have never had that issue in the past and couldn’t find anyone or documents explaining the issue. Thank you again. We are up and running. -Zach

Bot only queues records from Google Sheets

Jon — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 19:31:29 GMT

@pbretz Yes, that would be an option. I’m pretty confident that it’s an issue specific to Google Sheets and not a “bot” value, generally.

Any experience of high-scale render farms? What could I expect to achieve in a 24 hour processing window?

Jeff — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 01:23:48 GMT

@TYR Render Boss can certainly be used to process Templater output files on different machines in order to speed up rendering! Although we haven’t done abundant testing with them, most common AE rendering solutions like RenderGarden or BGRenderer should also work with Templater. Templater can be configured to render through After Effects or to create replicated .aep files that can be passed off to other software render solutions. Hopefully, that should get you started but if you have any further questions, please just let us know. Thanks!

Using CLI to enable Bot

Jon — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 15:35:19 GMT

@pbretz Are you able to share a screen recording illustrating the issue? If you want it to be private, you can create a support ticket.

Window does not have a constructor

Jon — Sat, 19 Oct 2019 05:14:08 GMT

@shaileshom Can you submit a support ticket and include the full templater.log file as well as your templater-options.json file?

Can you use a render farm to export videos?

Jon — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 18:39:32 GMT

@pablogomez If you are using a “Bot” workflow, where the Bot is watching (“pulling”) your data source, you need to have the UI visible. CLI can run without, as long as you are “pushing” data in, and not using the Bot. Have you seen the other thread about application architecture?

CLI Error: "Window does not have a constructor"

TorbenEC — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 10:27:32 GMT

Yes using -ui helps, I wasn’t aware I needed that for the bot function.

How can I install Templater and Adobe After Effects on a virtual machine in the cloud?

Sudhansu — Mon, 20 May 2019 12:31:29 GMT

Great, thanks @ariestav.

looking for experienced extendscript developers

ariestav — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 16:41:49 GMT

@pej87 We are always happy to help. Please submit a ticket to support@dataclay.com for more information. Thanks!

Bot won't render batch videos and update my JSON to "Done"

Jon — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 11:13:43 GMT

@groundless Glad to heard it’s working!

After Effects error: Unable to set "Stretch". NaN is not a number

ariestav — Sun, 02 Dec 2018 03:51:17 GMT

Hi there, Just following up to the support ticket you submitted regarding the error. This usually means there is a “stretch” parameter that is set within the Templater Settings effect that cannot work for the dynamic layer. Are any of your layers making use of any Templater Settings effect’s Time group of controls? Thanks, Arie

Bot won't update my JSON to "Done"

Jon — Sat, 03 Nov 2018 01:12:04 GMT

@kdav82 Are you using a local JSON file, or a JSON feed/URL? If you’re using a JSON feed, have you registered a script with the post-output or post-job event in Templater’s Preferences, and if you have, what is the script/incantation that you’re using? When you are using the CLI, are you launching the Bot, or are you launching a batch render job? If you’re using a render job, it will ignore the render-status. The downside of using the CLI to run the Bot is that it won’t ever spin down-- the process needs to be ended manually, where a batch render job can close on completion.

Including Templater Bot in your application architecture

ariestav — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 17:55:52 GMT

Your application can integrate with Templater Bot by using either of the two following methods. They both allow your application to feature automatic creation of custom, on-demand, video content.

Pulling Data into Compositions

One method involves running After Effects on a machine that is “always on” while having The Bot regularly poll Templater’s data source. This is called Enabling The Bot. When enabled, The Bot queries Templater’s data source for ready values in a column or property named render-status. Templater then automatically performs its output tasks with those query results. This is the easier of the two methods to understand and to implement.

You can see an overview of how Templater Bot pulls data into After Effects compositions by watching the following video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BJEu7coCsI

Pushing Data to Compositions

The other method involves “commanding” Templater to push data into an After Effects project and to perform its output tasks. To do this, use Templater’s command line interface to push data into compositions. You can wrap your own REST API around Templater’s command line interface which gives you unparalleled flexibility in how your data is delivered to Templater for processing. Implementing this method does require software development skills, but you gain more flexibility, robustness, and scalability using this method.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxqCBncxoX0