Release — Templater 3.8.0

[Jeff]

The Dataclay team is proud to announce a new version of Templater, 3.8, which adds new options to increase output flexibility. We also improved the system architecture for batch rendering, replication, and spot-check algorithms to deliver increased performance, support multi-target jobs, and modernized logging. Enjoy and Happy Rendering!
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WHAT’S NEW IN 3.8.0

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• NEW FEATURE: Per-target Output Configurations

  The “target” property in your data source now supports per-target render settings, output modules, and custom output naming. Instead of providing a simple list of composition names, you can pass an array of objects where each object maps a composition name to its own configuration.

  Supported Configuration Keys:

  All keys are optional. When omitted, Templater falls back to the job-level value, or the selection in the Templater panel.

  • settings : Name of an AE Render Settings template to use for this target.
  • module : Name of an AE Output Module template to use for this target.
  • output : Custom output name and optional subfolder path relative to the output
    destination.
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  ‎Example

          {                                                               
            "target": [                                                   
              { "FINAL_1080P": {                                          
                  "settings": "Best Settings",                            
                  "module":   "Lossless",                                 
                  "output":   "hd/custom_1080p"                           
                }                                                         
              },                                                          
              { "FINAL_720P": {                                           
                  "settings": "Draft Settings",                           
                  "module":   "H.264 - Match Render",                     
                  "output":   "sd/custom_720p"                            
                }                                                         
              },                                                          
              { "SOCIAL SQUARE": {                                        
                  "module": "Lossless"                                    
                }                                                         
              },                                                          
              "SOCIAL PORTRAIT"                                           
            ]                                                             
          }
  

  In this example

  • FINAL_1080P
    Renders with “Best Settings”, outputs via “Lossless”, and saves as hd/custom_1080p within the output destination.

  • FINAL_720P
    Renders with “Draft Settings”, outputs via “H.264”, and saves as sd/custom_720p.

  • SOCIAL SQUARE
    Uses only a custom output module. Render settings and output naming fall back to defaults.

  • SOCIAL PORTRAIT
    Plain string entry. All settings come from the job level or the Templater panel.

  Output Path Behavior

  The “output” value is a literal path relative to the output destination folder. It can include subdirectory components separated by “/” or “\” – Templater normalizes path separators across platforms and creates any necessary subdirectories automatically.

  Fallback Behavior

  If a per-target “settings” or “module” name does not match anytemplate installed in the After Effects project, Templater logs a warning and falls back to the job-level or panel default. This ensures rendering continues even if a template name contains a typo.

  Compatibility
  All previously supported “target” formats continue to work:

  • Single string
    "FINAL_1080P"

  • Comma-separated string
    "FINAL_1080P, FINAL_720P"

  • Comma-separated quoted strings
    "FINAL_1080P", "SOCIAL PORTRAIT"

  • JSON array of strings
    ["FINAL_1080P", "FINAL_720P"]

  • Mixed array of strings and config objects
    ["FINAL_720P", {"SOCIAL SQUARE": {"module": "Lossless"}}]
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• IMPROVEMENT: Multi-target support in ExtendScript API

  The $D.target() method now returns the currently active target composition when called with no parameter, and returns all resolved target comps when called with a truthy argument. For example, $D.target(true).

  Event scripts for ExtendScript execution can reference output file information by passing in the target comp name into the $D.output() method. If Templater processed multiple targets, and no composition name is passed into the $D.output() method, it returns an array of output info Objects. For backwards compatibility, if Templater processed only a single target for a job, then $D.output() returns only a single Object.
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• FEATURE: Validate footage sources before batch execution

  In After Effects, rendering fails when projects contain footage items with missing or bad references to source files. These missing links to source files cause the infamous “Failed at N/A” message on render items listed within AE’s Render Queue. In the context of Templater batch processing, this “soft crashes” After Effects in that it will appear to be unresponsive and interacting with its GUI does not work — it “freezes”.

  With this new feature enabled, Templater validates a project’s footage items before it starts processing. Users must resolve all project items to actual file sources in order for batch processing to function as designed. Otherwise, Templater experiences a fatal error and cannot continue without user intervention. In this case, error code, ERR::MISSFTG, will appear in the render-status field inside Templater’s connected data source.
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• FEATURE: Render status tracking in Google Sheets sources

  Users authorized with write permissions to Templater’s connected Google Sheet can now track the render status of the rows that it processes in manual batch mode (Pro edition automation).

  If a render-status column does not exist in Templater’s connected Google Sheet, one will be auto-appended to the last column and Templater will write the state of the jobs into cells under that column. Error codes are also written into the render-status column to surface issues Templater encounters.

  To prevent any render-status tracking in Google Sheets you can disable a preference found in the “Data Source” tab. Note that, by default, render-status tracking is turned on. You may want to turn it off if speed is a concern.
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• FEATURE: Preference to halt processing on missing projects

  You can now choose to halt batch processing when Templater processes a job that references a missing After Effects project file. A new render-status error, ERR::AEP, will display as a label within the render-status column when Templater cannot find the file referenced in an aep column.
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• FEATURE: Check for Templater updates from preferences

  You can now check for updates that Templater has from within the Templater Preferences > Updates panel. Inspect the Changelog and open the latest readme file before running the upgrade sequence directly from within Templater.
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• Other Improvements & Bug Fixes

  • New argument macro, $target_name, for passing name of actively processed comp to a shell script.

  • Upgraded integrated AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic

  • Increased performance and speed for Templater switching and opening Autograf project files.

  • All target compositions specified in a multi-target job will have Time Sculpting rules applied.

  • Logging is now clearer and reports duration of various tasks that Templater performs.

  • Fixed a bug related to the project item structure when Templater replicates compositions to disk.

  • Fixed a bug related to detecting local Tab-Separated TSV files from local JSON formatted files.

  • Fixed a bug when Templater Bot is configured to both Render and Replicate target compositions.

  • Fixed a bug for more accurate QUE credit usage across all data source types.