@pbretz It’s probably difficult to do without some kind of math if your timeline is moving around a lot, but since you can pass data values to be arguments in an event script incantation, you could pass a time/timecode value into a script to extract key frames as stills using the above mentioned methods.

@1337err

Hmmm, this one is a bit tricky. If I understand correctly, the proposed scenario is one where the audio layer is stretched if it’s shorter than the video layer, but if it’s longer, it’s not.

Assuming that’s the case, I think, theoretically, it could be done, but we’d need to go one step beyond Expressions and use Templater Bot’s Event Scripts function to use some ExtendScript to evaluate the length of the two layers and update Templater as needed.

To start, I’d set up two different master comps. One that has Time Sculpting set up for a longer audio file and one for a shorter duration. Once that’s done, we’d need to develop a script that evaluates the length of the two layers to determine the duration of the assets in question. I believe that app.project.item().duration object should work for this.

Finally, once we know the length of the two layers, we should be able to use a $D.job.set() command to update the target value in the data to the comp with the matching layout logic.

Since this is a bit more complex than the previous questions, there’s likely going to be some trial and error involved in writing the script and testing to make sure that it executes correctly. However, from a conceptual level, I do believe it should be possible.

If you have any questions, let us know, and we’ll do our best to help out.

Thanks,

Jeff

@dwalters There are videos demonstrating setting a target as well as switching between project files. For data in expressions, see the link in my previous post under the section “referencing dynamic text layers.”

@Neil-González Have you added those to the process exceptions list? Is there a separate file blocking area that you can add them to a permanent whitelist? I’m not directly familiar with Trend Micro’s interface.

Thanks Jon!

Thanks Jeff!

@rdbs

I apologize; my last response was a bit garbled. Templater Rig should be able to use the same Time Sculpting features as Pro and Bot. Those options would probably be your best bet when it comes to customizing the comp duration. Let us know if you have any further questions. Thanks!

Thanks Jeff!

Great to hear! Happy Rendering!

@tasnadi-otto

OK. I think this will work for what you’re trying to do:

var compName = $D.job.get("compname"); var layerName = $D.job.get("layername"); var layerTime = $D.job.get("time"); var myComp; for (var i = 1; i <= app.project.numItems; i ++) { if ((app.project.item(i) instanceof CompItem) && (app.project.item(i).name === compName)) { myComp = app.project.item(i); break; } } myComp.layer(layerName).startTime = layerTime;

I’ll explain the methodology briefly here so that you can adjust as needed. The comp name is set by the “compname” field in the data source (more on that in a second), the layer by “layername”, the time value by “time”. These values can obviously be altered to fit your project as needed.

The code that begins with var myComp; is essentially a quick loop that searches your Project for the text outlined in the compName variable and returns the index value. That way, you can pick the comp using plain text rather than an index. The layer name within the comp can be designated by text, so that’s what the layerName variable is for.

I tested this on the “Before layers update” event, and it seemed to work without an issue. It’s possible there might be some issues if you have a huge number of layers that all need updating, but this should be a good starting point. If you run into trouble, feel free to let us know, and we’ll see what we can do. Thanks!

@jeff AMAZING! Thank you for such a quick response! Got it working now. I was just able to pump out a list of 150 dealerships to Youtube ready MP4’s in just over 20 mins… Templater fricking rules. You can expect a new customer within a week or so!

@ariestav Thank you! It’s a great feature when building from scratch - much appreciated.

In my case the issue was caused by keyframes on the Source Text of a text layer. Removing the keyframes resolved the issue. Thanks to the support team!

@jon looks like I needed an absolute path for the aws command. All’s working now! Thanks for the help.

@darrencase There are several ways to set text color. We’ve got a sample project on our GitHub repo that demonstrates one of the ways, but there are others as well.

@ariestav pssshhht, of course it was ridiculously easier LOL

Thank you.

Thank you Jon that last tip was a big help. any other info would be very helpful . like how to use JSON with GSheets or vise versa. Ariestav seems to be a good idea but im still having trouble in the implementation of it.

@ariestav I couldn’t attach the templater-event-cmd.bat so I copied the contents into the body of the email with my batch script.

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.

@tok_tok

Let’s try moving the script to the “After layers update” event under “Layer Processing”. It’s possible that having it run at Data Retrieval may be too early to process the Work Area correctly. Give that a shot, and if you still run into problems, it might be easier if you could drop us a line directly at support@dataclay.com. Thanks!