@Ben-Forman

I understand that we’re in direct contact on this particular issue, but I wanted to make sure that any additional technical questions that you might have get answered. As far as referrals go, we’re in the process of creating a system for clients to get in touch with skilled developers. That should be launching relatively shortly, but if we can answer any other questions in the meantime, please just us know.

@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!

For anyone that’s viewing tis thread, the issue lay around toggling on and off pre-compped layers.

Using the “swapping” function gave me the results I was looking for. Thanks @ariestav for all the help.

Here’s a once of Ari’s videos that explains comp swapping.

Previewing with Templater's Data Transport

@Tasnadi-Otto Does the attachment work in the expected behavior in your main composition? Or, is the attachment broken when you use the Master Properties feature in AE?

Can you share the templater.log file with us? Also, check this article out — it may offer some tips to help troubleshoot the issue.

Thanks,
Arie

@Ryan

Absolutely. It’s what the “Fit Image Style” option in Templater Effect Panel does. There are two options: Fill (Cropped) and Letterbox (No Cropping). Fill will expand the image until it fills the entire frame, whereas Letterbox will keep the image constrained to the Comp proportions. If you have any additional questions about Templater, please just let us know.

@Neil-González

It’s definitely going to depend on how the data is collected and what you’re trying to achieve. You could certainly render each worksheet individually and then combine them into a final master project, but you could also merge all of the data into one large sheet to create a ‘flat’ JSON file. That may allow you to combine the scenes without having to render or replicate the project multiple times. Instead, you could theoretically create sub-comps and then use the Time Sculpting features of Templater to resize the individual sections as necessary.

After looking at the data in your JSON example, you might consider a setup where you create a series of blank videos or comps of variable durations and then load them with the ‘duration’ data point. You could then use Time Sculpting to trim the image and text to that blank placeholder’s duration as needed. Again, a lot of this will depend on your setup, so if you have any specific questions, please just let us know.

As for your question about what version you need, it sounds like your setup will be best served by either the Pro or Bot version of Templater. If your final goal is full automation, Bot will probably be the way to go, but if you’re mainly looking to replicate and iterate large numbers of videos, Pro should be fine.

@IanW

Most of the basic testing we’ve done indicates that .ai files should be able to be swapped in without an issue. However, due to larger files’ potential complexity, there’s some possibility that performance might be impacted. If you’re looking to use more complex files, I’d recommend downloading the free trial version of Templater to see if it works well with you’re planning. The demo is a fully functional version of Templater Bot with a 30-day trial, so it should give you ample time to see if you run into any difficulties. We also provide support during the demo period, so if you run into issues, we can do what we can to help you in any way possible. Hope that helps!

@pbretz Are all machines looking at the same worksheet within one Sheet? How many items were being queued at once on each machine?

Thank you for the detailed response. I got word we are licensed for bot so once we get that going it should streamline the process!

@RonanDL

If you’re looking to initiate a replication job with Templater based on a trigger, the easiest way would probably be to set up a script to run Templater in CLI configuration. The Command-Line interface for Templater relies on a file named templater-options.json to control all of the various Template Preferences options, so configuring it to replicate to versioned .aep files should be a snap.

On the other hand, if you’re looking to switch between replication and rendering mid-job, that would be a bit trickier. I can think of a few different options that might work, but the easiest would be to use multiple Bots to process the data. You could set one to render and one to replicate and then designate which one the data is sent to using the reserved bot column. Hopefully, that makes sense, but if I can clarify anything, just let me know. Thanks!

@coeing Sorry for the time sink — I know it can be painful. We have fixed this, but we are working towards polishing some features in Templater with our new API product, QUE which is an intense dev task. We are aiming to release Templater 3 before end of year. Thank you for your patience and for using our software!

Hi…I utilize a comparable methodology while making client docs. I start by archiving the fundamental item, then, at that point, add the varieties. I utilize contingent labels to distinguish content for a particular yield. I likewise make preparing materials utilizing a comparative methodology.

Assuming the variety is theme based, ie there is a distinction in subjects utilized in the material, I then, at that point, utilize diverse TOCs to construct the yield. Sometimes I utilize a mix of the two methods, for instance preparing material does exclude every one of the points so utilizes a seperate TOC, and has its own restrictive labels to control content inside the subjects.

I additionally use conditions for on the web/print renditions. The print form incorporates screen captures, yet I don’t utilize numerous screen captures for online conveyance (except if I need the client to see what the screen should resemble). Very little point having screen captures on the off chance that the client has the program open.

@jeff Thanks

@jeff THank you so much - I took the open/closed quotations route and it works fine. Appreciate it!

-Joe

@rkvalvaa

Thanks for the update; that’s quite odd. It’s possible that this might be caused by After Effects holding on to some of the legacy preferences from the previous installation of Templater. Could you try clearing the After Effects preferences using the method outlined on this page and see if that makes any difference in what you’re seeing?

Another thing you might try would be to create a new project and see if the issue is limited to previously created After Effects files. We’ve seen some problems in the past with project files storing information from previous versions of Templater/After Effects which might account for what you’re seeing here.

Thanks!

@viriato

Hmmm. That’s quite odd. One thing to check would be to see what the value of post_cmd_output_async is in the templater-options.json file. That key should be set to false to enable synchronous execution, which should keep the post_cmd_job action from setting the render-status to done until the script is completed.

If that doesn’t make any difference, we might need to get some additional information on what actions the script is performing. If that ends up being the case and you’d like to provide that information in a less public setting, please feel free to email our support channel directly at support@dataclay.com

Thanks!

@rkvalvaa

Glad to hear it. If you have any other questions or run into any other issues, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks!

@pbretz

The jobs being left in a state of “processing” in Google Sheets is actually a bug left over from the way the Google API updates when footage is missing. Technically speaking, the render-status should be changed to “done” in the Google Sheets since it completes the Job with the option set in the Templater Preferences dialog.

This was a scenario we likely should have envisioned in the past, but our assumption was that customers would use Spot Checks rather than the render-status to check for outputs with missing footage.

Either way, we’ll see about implementing some sort of flag to indicate Jobs that complete with missing assets.

Thanks,

Jeff

Yeah, got it to work, had to select one of the jobs first, and then all columns showed 🙂 This is great, I’m really starting to love QUE as much as I do Templater 🙂

@pbretz

It can depend quite a bit on how your systems are configured, but I’ll try and outline the basics here. To run Event Scripts, the first thing you’ll need is a copy of Templater Bot. Event Scripts are only available on this version of Templater, so if you’re using Pro or Rig, this won’t be an option.

Once you’ve got Bot set up, head to the Templater Preferences window and click on “Setup ExtendScripts”. From there, you should get a box that will allow you to choose which Templater event you’d like to use to trigger the Event Script.

When I tested the script outlined above, I registered it on the “After layers update” event under “Layer Processing”. This instructs the script to run after any data versioning and Time Sculpting have been applied to the project.

If you’re running Templater via CLI, you’ll want to specify the script you’d like to run in the templater-options.json file on the appropriate Event. In this case, you’d want to add it to the “post_cmd_update” event.

Those are the basics, but more information can be found in this article from our support website. Additionally, we have some example scripts on our GitHub Page located here.

If you run into any hurdles or if we can answer any questions, just let us know!

Thanks!