@dwalters The most common cause for the error shown in the screenshot is, more often than not, attempting to authenticate using an older version of Templater. Google made a change to the authentication method that their API uses to grant apps access to Google Sheets last year. Due to this change, previous versions of Templater will no longer be able to sign in to Google Sheets. The first thing I’d try is updating to the latest version of Templater. You can download the installer for Templater Standard (for AE 2022 and above) from this link: https://assets.dataclay.com/Templater3.zip and Templater Legacy (For AE 2021 and below) here: https://assets.dataclay.com/Templater3-Legacy.zip Hopefully, that’s all we should need to get things up and running, but if you run into further issues, just let us know, and we’ll see where we need to go from there. Thanks!

@viriato The terminal window in that screenshot is an indication that Templater Bot is executing an Event Script at some point during the versioning process. Typically, when a Shell Script is registered to an event, it’ll be wrapped up in a command named templater-event-cmd.bat and run at the appropriate time during the Templater process. If this window is causing the process to hang up or fail, it likely has to do with one of the registered Event Scripts in Templater Bot. In order to figure out what’s happening here, we’ll likely need to take a look at any Shell Scripts registered with Templater. We’ll also need to see how those scripts are being invoked to get a clearer idea of what could be causing the issue. If you’d like, you can post that information here, but if you’d like to get in touch with us directly so as not to share this data on a public forum, you can always email us at support@dataclay.com. Hopefully, with a bit more information on how things are configured, we should be able to track down what’s causing this issue. Thanks!

@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!

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 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

@pbretz Hi Pete, I checked in and it looks like we’ve got it fairly high on our list, and we’re eyeing early next year for release. I don’t have an exact timeframe, but hopefully in the first few months.

@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!

@motion-jp Glad to hear it! My guess is that something went wrong when the previous project was imported, and an asset was incorrectly reported as a JPEG sequence instead of a static image file. It’s possible that AE then cached that asset state, so every time the file was loaded, AE saw it as a sequence regardless of whether it was previously removed or not. We haven’t seen that particular scenario before, but it’s good to hear that you were able to get it resolved. If you run into any additional problems, please feel free to get in touch. Thanks!

@unclemonty It seems like you’ve already found a solution, but I wanted to chime in and say that it should, theoretically, be possible to map the same value to both a footage and text layer simultaneously. In this case, the footage layer should be swapped out, and the text layer should be replaced with the filename present in the cell. As you noted, you’d need to use an expression to strip out any subfolder information or file extensions, but from a theoretical standpoint, it should work. If you have any other questions or run into any problems, let us know, and we’ll do whatever we can to get you up and running. Thanks!

@joevac Thanks for getting in touch with us. This issue most commonly occurs when a value besides {{off}}, {{on}}, or a valid precomp name is referenced in the Data Source for the project. What typically happens is that Templater tries to reference the value in the Data Source and map it onto the precomp layer as either text or as a footage reference. This is what is causing the pre-comp to turn into an image when cycling through the rows. The first thing I’d try is to check and see if you have anything besides {{off}} or {{on}} in your Google Sheet if you’re primarily using Templater to control layer visibility. Hopefully, that’s all it is, but if that doesn’t change anything or you have any further questions, please feel free to let us know. Thanks, and happy rendering!

@lucarech Templater can absolutely handle all of those sorts of assets! In fact, swapping out text is our plugin’s most common use case. Videos and music can also be swapped in as long as they’re in a format that After Effects can read. I’d recommend taking a look at the tutorial videos on our Youtube channel as well as the documentation on our support website for further details. If you have any other questions, please feel free to let us know. Thanks!

@viriato Unfortunately, due to the way that After Effects is invoked from the CLI when a batch is run, Templater will always spin up an AE instance, render the data that’s been passed over, and then close out. There isn’t a way to force Templater to stay open and await further data without using Templater Bot. I’m assuming that using Bot isn’t an option due to the real-time processing requirement of this project. If that’s the case, and the time that Templater takes to spin up, process, close, and re-open is introducing a delay into the system, the only recommendation that I could make would be to run multiple instances of Templater Bot simultaneously so that new entries in the data source could be passed off to a fresh system while the previous one closes out the last job batch. If those assumptions are incorrect, or if there are some details that I’m missing, please feel free to let us know any additional information about the project that might help us to make a better suggestion. Thanks!

@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!

@seth thanks. That is what the behavior is. It seems to apply to all filters. I get the same limit with filtering output.

@pbretz It’s relatively similar but actually a bit easier with Shape Layers. Since Shape Layers intrinsically have a “Color” property under the “Fill” section, there’s no need to add a Fill Effect to the layer. You can simply add the Expression directly to the “Color” value. Adobe has also added a more streamlined Expression that can convert hex codes to the RGB values needed to determine a layer’s color. This Expression: hexToRgb(""+thisComp.layer("layername").text.sourceText+"") should perform the same function as the Expression referenced in the previous post. The layername value will need to be swapped out for the name of the text layer with the hex information you’d like to use for the fill. Other than that, it should work the same. Let us know if you run into any issues, and we’ll see what we can do to help. Thanks!

@pbretz My understanding was that there shouldn’t be anything else to do aside from assigning the specific AEP to the applicable set of jobs in the campaign (functional parity with Google Sheets). If it’s not functioning that way, that’s something we’ll need to open a ticket on and investigate. I’ll dig into it and try to get more info for you. Seth