Can´t understand how "replicate" works

Junior

I´ve checked in preferences the following boxes;
“Replicate”
“Send replicates to Adobe Media Encoder”

But nothing happens when I hit “Enable bot”.
It says after some time: “finished replicating rows … through … currently idle”
But I can´t find it anywhere.
I set Adobe Encoder to watch many folders already, but none of them can find what I just replicated.
And even having the “render-status” column in Google Sheets it never changes to done… is always as “ready”, like if the bot was not activated…
Could you please help me?
Thanks!!!

Junior

Oh, I also forgot to mention:
the output is not working…
I even created a new spreadsheet to keep the Output as the first column, but the name is comming as the comp name and a number after that.
What could be the cause of that?

Jon

@Junior Could you verify that you’ve set up the Bot and Media Encoder following the guidelines in these links?

If neither of those help, are you able to share screenshots of your Templater panel and Templater’s Preferences?

Junior

Hello, Jon.
No, nothing works…
Here are the prints of templater options…
Thanks!!!

ariestav

@Junior does any output get created in the output destination folder when you perform a batch Replicate operation by clicking the “Replicate” button? The output would be .aep files.

You should have a templater.log file that will show whether or not Templater is actually retrieving data. Can you send along?

Also, we have a basic troubleshooting guide that can help you understand how to get the Templater log.

Junior

I´ve just checked…
What happens is:
templater is creating some JSON files (Adobe After Effects JSON (.json)) in the folder where the original project is located, and not in the folder that I indicated as destination…
About the render thing, I figured it out. I had it “Ready” instead of “ready”, and now it works…
But only if I choose to render, and not replicate…
Andjust so you know, I even tried to select tthe box “import templater data as json footage”, but it was the same…

Check the last registers of log;.

2021-4-26 @ 15:3:22 [LAYOUT] : Performing layout for 1 layers =>
[ nomedamae ]

2021-4-26 @ 15:3:22 [LAYER ARRANGE] : [ –== DEPTH 0 ==– ]
2021-4-26 @ 15:3:22 [LAYER ARRANGE] : [ –== DEPTH 1 ==– ]
2021-4-26 @ 15:3:28 [REPLICATE] : Replicate job data =>
output => JUNIORMINHAMAIL@MAIL.COM
nomedamae => Juniozinho10
render-status => ready
rowidx => 11
id => null
ID => null

2021-4-26 @ 15:3:29 [LAYOUT] : Performing layout for 1 layers =>
[ nomedamae ]

2021-4-26 @ 15:3:29 [LAYER ARRANGE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:3:29 [LAYER ARRANGE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:3:40 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:3:40 [BOT ACTION] 2021-4-26 @ 15:3:40 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:3:46 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:3:46 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:3:58 [BOT ACTION] 2021-4-26 @ 15:3:58 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:24 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:24 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:24 [BOT ACTION] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:24 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:27 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:27 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:42 [BOT ACTION] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:42 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:44 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:44 [REPLICATE] 2021-4-26 @ 15:4:59 [BOT TOGGLE] 0.3 : [ –== DEPTH 0 ==– ]
: [ –== DEPTH 1 ==– ]
: Finished replicating rows 2 through 4. Currently idle.
: Replicate…
: Executing batch replicate of target comp.
: Now replicating target for rows 2 through 4
: Finished replicating rows 2 through 4. Currently idle.
: Replicate…
: Executing batch replicate of target comp.
: Now replicating target for rows 2 through 4
: Finished replicating rows 2 through 4. Currently idle.
: Replicate…
: Executing batch replicate of target comp.
: Now replicating target for rows 2 through 4
: Finished replicating rows 2 through 4. Currently idle.
: Replicate…
: Executing batch replicate of target comp.
: Now replicating target for rows 2 through 4
: Finished replicating rows 2 through 4. Currently idle.
: Templater Bot checking [ Google Sheet Document ] interval in minutes =>

2021-4-26 @ 15:4:59 [BOT] : The Bot for Templater is now disabled

Jon

@Junior One thing to make sure, even if you’re not importing footage-- you should still have a Footage folder set in the Templater panel. Also, can you verify that you have set up both Templater and Adobe Media Encoder as explained in the links in my previous post?

You’ll want to disable the “import templater data as JSON” option and delete any JSON files that appeared in your project. That is an experimental feature that we don’t recommend using unless you know its specific limitations due to an unfixed bug in After Effects.

Lastly, there may be a problem of setting your Destination folder to a OneDrive folder. Synced folders for things like Google Drive and Dropbox can cause issues with both After Effects and with Templater. These apps will take control of a file and lock it before AE/Templater can finish working on it, which will create errors or cause missing files. Can you set the output Destination to a different folder, such as a folder on your desktop or in your documents folder? Then once you’ve changed that location, also set the Media Encoder watch folder to that same folder.

Junior

Hey, Jon. I´ve tried each one of them,
It stills creates the JSON files.
And what is weird:
The location that I chose to get the files is not being used.
The log and the JSON files go to the place where the project is saved, doesn´t matter if I chose another location.
I set a footage folder now, deleted the json files, changed the destination folder and double checked the w links you sent me…
Have no idea what I can do now…

Junior

I think I got it.
I cannot have the project in one place and save the videos in another folder, right?
Looks like it worked for me now!
I wll let you know if problem comes again.
Thanks for all you help, guys!
Templater looks awsome

Jon

@Junior The JSON files that Templater generates in that folder can be ignored. They aren’t relevant to what you’re doing. You will want to still remove any that got imported into the Project panel in your AEP file, as those can cause errors.

You can have the project file and the replicated AEP files or videos in separate locations. The two are independent. In addition, you can also have the AME watch folder be in a completely different location from AME’s output folder. AME defaults to sorting the files it is processing into a source and an output folder within the main destination that you are watching, but you can set those to be separated.