@vreddhi-bhat Glad to hear that you were able to resolve the problem. If you run into any other issues or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out, and we’ll be more than happy to help. Happy rendering! Jeff

@wcs Thanks for the clarification. This should absolutely be doable with Templater. You’ll probably need to use a combination of Expressions driven by Templater data like the one suggested above and maybe some of Templater’s flag options to turn layers on and off as needed. Hopefully, that’s enough to get you started, but if you have any additional questions, feel free to post them here or get in touch with us directly at support@dataclay.com Thanks, Jeff

@RyanB Glad to hear that you were able to track down the issue. I did some research and spoke with some of our devs, and I can confirm that all write operations for both replication and render actions should be completed before any “post_cmd_job” actions are run. If you have any other questions, please feel free to let us know. Thanks, Jeff

@Matt-Keyes Unfortunately, ExtendScript doesn’t contain any hooks that can be used to control Templater. Templater can execute ExtendScripts via the Event Scripts feature at various points throughout the reversioning process, but ExtendScript can’t kick off a render or replication operation. The closest thing I could recommend for that sort of behavior would be to run Templater in CLI mode. That would allow you to start Templater up in a way that could be executed via a script or some other form of automation. Thanks, Jeff

@Jeff Thanks for your detailed response! My curiosity has been satiated on this matter.

@Falrinth Thanks for the update. If we can figure out a way to replicate the error reliably, that would be quite useful. When we get the time, it would probably be beneficial if you could open up a direct ticket with us so that we can get some more data about the structure of the project, the workflow for the replications, and, hopefully, some details from a non-sensitive log file. Let us know how else we can help out, and we’ll see where we need to go from there. Thanks, Jeff

Hi @Antoonyx! Thank you for your question — we are happy to help answer your questions. In full transparency, you are going to get a biased answer as to which software you should use as you’re on the Dataclay forums :smiling_face_with_halo: ! First, I would recommend Adobe After Effects to build our your master, dynamic, template. You can achieve that with Templater Rig. When you outfit an AE project to accept dynamic data using Templater, the resultant project is what is known as an “Autograf”. This project file can be linked to a variety of data sources, but a spreadsheet, such as a Google Sheet, is an easy one to use for starters. Each row in the sheets represents a new output video to be rendered, while each column in the sheet refers to the dynamic items (i.e. layers) within the After Effects compositions. As you design and build your Autograf, you link Templater to a footage repository containing the footage you want to use for each output. Then, in the data, you write a relative path from that footage repository to where the footage actually exists. The best part is that the footage does not necessarily even have to be on the same machine that AE is running on. In the linked datasource, you can use URLs and when Templater reads that URL it will attempt to download the footage locally to that drive. In your case, you can keep sub folders within the main footage repository so that each video’s contents are separated. Then, in the data source, you can enter the subfolder path to the assets. Dataclay customers are achieving the bulk production and automation you are currently seeking. Templater for After Effects can re-version master After Effects projects into still images and videos. To get a comprehensive overview of the software and workflow, please take a look at this video which just scratches the surface of what’s possible with Templater Rig, Pro, and Bot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAnZB2aZWTg

@Jeff After not having any success with the expression I posted, I actually did what you suggested, using an expression to change the source text for each layer, adding in the dynamic text. I just didn’t think of using an Animator for the faux italics, so I had just resigned myself to keeping the font the same. I appreciate your ideas, and I’ll give them a try soon. Thanks!

@Jon Sorry for the late reply. Yes, I got everything working with Jeff’s advice and your tips. Big thanks for the help.

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!

@dave Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it’s not possible to change a text layer to a footage layer dynamically in After Effects. From what I can see, this appears to be due to the fact that AE sets each layer’s type when it’s first created, and text layers seem to be using an entirely different logic engine than footage layers. If I understand the scenario that you’re describing and you’re using Google Sheets, our best bet might be to use some Sheets formulas to turn “First Last - usa.png” into two cells that contain “First Last” and “usa.png”. That would be data that would be more useable for Templater since the “usa.png” value could be set to refer to footage, and the “First Last” input could be added to a corresponding text layer. Hopefully, that helps, but if you have any other questions, please let us know, and we’ll see what we can do. Thanks, Jeff

@Jeff Thanks for the info. I’m familiar with the Filter action in Zapier and will try that out. I was expecting that we’d need to use a Que action. Thanks. Pete

@Jeff Thank you. I understand that there needs to be a limitation for the free version, but I almost shot myself in the foot by batch importing 40+ jobs. I’m working on my 2nd Campaign, and I will use that for some more testing. Right now I’m just trying to learn how it works and testing to make sure I can get the data imported from my source. I’ll reach out if I need to delete anything, but I think I understand enough to be able to avoid that for now. Thanks

@Jeff Just to close the loop on this. Support informed me that the comment field in each marker needs to be filled in for the Spot Check feature to work. Problem solved.

@Jeff That is awesome! Thank you! Worked like a charm

@Jeff Thanks for the info. I’m familiar with expressions, but far from an expert. We’ll see how this goes. I’ll circle back either way. -josh

@rkvalvaa Before we get too far into the weeds, it should be noted that we may have a temporary fix available for the issue with Google Sheets and Templater Bot. If you open a support ticket with us or contact us at support@dataclay.com we can discuss those options further. As far as the questions about QUE go, I’d like to address the second one first since it’s a more straightforward “fix”. To use an Autograf on multiple Satellites, you should only need to add a “bot” key to the Job to specify which system should process the data. Usually, each Job will be assigned to the default Satellite specified in the Campaign settings. However, this can be overridden with a value assigned via the “bot” reserved key. Additionally, it shouldn’t be necessary to register the same Autograf multiple times. As long as the Autograf data is present in the QUE account that the system is connecting to, it should be possible to use the same registration data on multiple systems. As for the first question, this has to do with a fundamental difference in how data is handled in QUE as opposed to Google Sheets. In a Google Sheet, each cell either has data or doesn’t, but the cell is always present for Templater to read, even if it’s empty. In a JSON format, like the one QUE uses, a value may disappear entirely. When this happens, Templater keeps the previously loaded data since it’s not getting any information to use to determine how to handle the associated layer. I can think of a couple of ways to get around this, but the easiest would be to pass through a “blank” or “empty” value rather than omit the property entirely. This will likely depend on how the Zap is set up that’s passing data over from Google Sheets to QUE, but that would definitely be the most basic and straightforward fix. The other solution would be to create multiple Autografs to swap between using an aep value from the Data Source. Using this method, you should be able to create versions of the project that simply excise the layers that won’t be getting values. This would likely take more work, depending on how many assets might need to be customized, but it would result in a cleaner final product since Templater wouldn’t have to process the missing layers. Hopefully, that gets us on the right track, but please feel free to contact us at support@dataclay.com for more assistance. Thanks, Jeff

@jeff Thank you! No wonder I couldn’t get those .aep files directly into Media Encoder. I’ll look into AfterCodecs. That could be a great alternative to a watch folder workflow for just one type of deliverable.

@Jeff @Jon , Good afternoon, could you tell me a prediction of normalization? I ask this because it is impacting a lot on our workflow. I need to decide whether to redo some internal processes.