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

@Jon Thanks that was very helpful. Appreciate!

@danoakes & @rikpare Apologies for the late response, but this is most likely happening if the image URLs don’t point directly to the file (such as a file with URL arguments or one that loads a webpage instead of the file directly-- Dropbox and Google Drive links are examples), if they don’t have a file extension in the URL, or if they are password protected. You can test the URL by opening a private browser window and pasting the URL into the address bar. If the file doesn’t load, it’s probably set to be private. If it loads in a frame (such as with Dropbox and Google Drive), then the URL won’t work. If it’s a matter of the link missing a file extension, if you add the correct file extension to the downloaded file, it will import, as the file is not corrupt, but it’s that After Effects depends upon the file extension to import a file. Any file without a file extension will not import into After Effects.

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

@alip as another idea, to add to what @ariestav suggested, if you know the duration, you can also us “dummy” video clips that are the correct duration, then use the Time properties of the Templater Settings effect to match the duration of the images to the duration of the videos. Similarly, you could also have each image precomped, and use the duration of the precomp pre-set to the duration you want, then set the duration of the clip to fill the full duration of the precomp. These two solutions don’t require using ExtendScript, but they would be limited syncing to one song, rather than songs with different durations/transitions on a per-job basis. If you need per-song flexibility, with different timings, you would need to look into using ExtendScript events as previously mentioned.

@ariestav Thanks for the reply. I will give both of those suggestions a try and report back.

@Tasnadi-Otto Just to clarify, are you talking about pixel dimensions (length and width) or time/duration? If you’re talking about time, you can do what Arie suggested, or, as a workaround, you could set up your text layer(s) and have it mapped in multiple comps, each comp having a different duration, then use comp switching feature to swap between different precomps using the method shown in this demonstration.

@Roberto-Mardini You can add your comp to the render queue normally via AE’s menus, and it will render just the currently-previewing individual job data. The render-status column is only used by Templater Bot. If you still want to output a range of rows, you’d still need to adjust the start and end values in the Transport controls section.

@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

Thank a lot for your quick response 🙂
I found it. I deed it hides in the window menu very down at the bottom.
Now I hope it will works as I expect and save me a lot of time.

@Jeff Yes that would work, I already shifted to that approach and dropped the idea of using markers, it was not necessary. Breaking the audio into smaller audio clips works. Thank you.

@Jeff-Rubin Could you clarify which form you are talking about, as we have several methods of communication on our site-- a general contact form, a support ticket form, and if you’ve submitted either form previously, you can either reply directly to any emails you receive from us or access and reply to your tickets when logged into the same account that sent the messages under the “account” menu. If something is broken, we need to know specifically what was happening so that we can investigate and address it. Thanks!

Oh yeah that should work. I’ll give it a try! Thanks

Thanks Jeff! Looking forward to the next version of Templater.

@johnsyounger Good to hear it’s working. Yeah, we have done some tests with Mr. Horse’s Animation Composer and have found that you have to dig deep into the comps that it creates and apply the Templater Settings effect to the layers that actually contain the text you want Templater to update. Hope this helps!

Hi Jeff,

Thanks so much for your thorough feedback. After reviewing the options you’ve presented, I think I will use Zapier - As I’m a bit of a coding novice, it seems like the easiest solution for me to deploy.
I will check back in if I have any hurdles with Templater and the Bot in the process.
I appreciate your help!

Tom

Perfect thanks!

I stumbled on the issue, in case others find themselves in a similar situation:

I had a layer with the Templater effect that was thrown outside its comp’s timeline. Whether this was a result of user error, or I had deleted a layer and forgot to update the effect settings, I am not sure.

Once I found the culprit layer, I deleted it, re-created the layer, and re-applying the Templater effect. This caused it to behave normally again.

I wish I knew the cause of the issue that made the layer appear outside of the comp’s timeline so I could avoid it in the future. But, for now, this gives me something to look out for in case the issue pops up again.

@jeff Thank you so much Jeff it helps a lot.

@jeff Thanks jeff, everything works fine!