@oms The structure of the data returned is not readable by Templater. You need to have it respond to your request as an array of objects. Inside the objects, you cannot have nested objects either. You actually can, but Templater will ignore it. So for example your structure now is this: { "data": { "id":2, "name":"fuchsia rose", "year":2001, "color":"#C74375", "pantone_value":"17-2031" }, "support": { "url":"https://reqres.in/#support-heading", "text":"To keep ReqRes free, contributions towards server costs are appreciated!" } } But really it needs to be an array, and it needs to be “flat” objects inside that array. So it would be best to do: [ { "id" : 2, "name" : "fuchsia rose", "year" : 2001, "color" : "#C74375", "pantone_value" : "17-2031", "url" : "https://reqres.in/#support-heading", "text" : "To keep ReqRes free, contributions towards server costs are appreciated!" } ] Note how the singular object is still within an array [ ]. Also note that there are no nested objects in that singular object in the array. Does this help?

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

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.

@Ben-Forman While Templater is able to use links to MP3 and MP4 files, the URL syntax requirements are very specific. Many web pages will use html to redirect requests to specific files, which can interfere with the ability to use remote assets in AE. Can you provide an example of the sort of URL you’re using? Appropriately formatted URL’s will generally end in with the filename of the file you’re looking to get, ie: https://download.samplelib.com/mp4/sample-10s.mp4 Let us take a look at the sort of URL you’re using, and we should be able to point you in the right direction. Thanks!

Perfect thanks!

Great to hear! Happy Rendering!

Thanks Jeff!

For output filenames, using characters from a subset of all possible characters can eliminate those types of “breaking” errors on write operations. Best practice is to simplify the naming of output to avoid operating system language settings from being the cause of an error. For references to footage assets in the data source, you should be able to write the reference path in the way your operating system displays it, so special characters should work there. Can you be specific about which is using special characters — output or references, or both? Thank you for performing more troubleshooting steps, looking forward to receiving more information on that.

@RonanDL If you’re looking to initiate a replication job with Templater based on a trigger, the easiest way would probably be to set up a script to run Templater in CLI configuration. The Command-Line interface for Templater relies on a file named templater-options.json to control all of the various Template Preferences options, so configuring it to replicate to versioned .aep files should be a snap. On the other hand, if you’re looking to switch between replication and rendering mid-job, that would be a bit trickier. I can think of a few different options that might work, but the easiest would be to use multiple Bots to process the data. You could set one to render and one to replicate and then designate which one the data is sent to using the reserved bot column. Hopefully, that makes sense, but if I can clarify anything, just let me know. Thanks!

@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.

@Tasnadi-Otto Hi! I replied to your other thread about the scaling issue, which is resolved in 2.9.6. We do not recommend using older versions of Templater, and if you are using it with Google Sheets, versions prior to 2.9.5 will stop working entirely with that data source in the near future. We don’t offer the older versions for download any longer. If you still need 2.9.1, the Windows installer would be included in the same zip archive as the MacOS one, so if you still have access to that in your MacOS downloads folder, you could get it that way. If you don’t still have access to that original download, it looks like you purchased through aescripts-- you can log into your account and go to your downloads section. From there, I believe it will allow you to download the original version you purchased, as well as the most recent version released. I don’t believe that their site offers intermediate versions, only the first and last ones.

@Tasnadi-Otto Is the precomp exactly square? If it is, if you add 1 px to the width of the precomp, does that resolve the issue? There was a bug in older versions of Templater in the way that crop and fill were calculating depending upon whether or not the source footage was portrait, landscape, or square, as well as whether or not the precomp was portrait, square, or landscape, The scaling bug is fixed in 2.9.6. In 2.9.6, it should behave correctly regardless of which orientation the footage or source are, and you also wouldn’t need to add the extra 1px for square comps.

@TYR Render Boss can certainly be used to process Templater output files on different machines in order to speed up rendering! Although we haven’t done abundant testing with them, most common AE rendering solutions like RenderGarden or BGRenderer should also work with Templater. Templater can be configured to render through After Effects or to create replicated .aep files that can be passed off to other software render solutions. Hopefully, that should get you started but if you have any further questions, please just let us know. Thanks!

@TYR Thanks for getting in touch with us. After doing a bit of research, I don’t think there would be any problem running After Effects with Templater on a PaperSpace instance. From what I can see, PaperSpace appears to be a virtual remote system service. As long as it’s able to run AE, I think you should be able to run Templater. The main difference between something like PaperSpace and AWS is really going to come down to flexibility. AWS seems to have a much more diverse selection of different system types depending on what kind of work you’re doing. I also noticed that PaperSpace seems to incline towards hourly pricing. If you’re planning on running an instance of Templater Bot, that’s constantly monitoring a data source, that could get pricey. As far as installation goes, you will need to contact Adobe to get approval to run After Effects on a cloud-based configuration. That’s just a limitation of the EULA for After Effects. When it comes to installation, a lot of it will depend on exactly how you’re going to have Templater configured. We do have some pre-made resources that might help. If you’re interested in exploring those options, I’d recommend contacting us directly at sales@dataclay.com to discuss pricing and availability. If you have any other questions, please just let us know! Thanks!

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

Thank you for the detailed response. I got word we are licensed for bot so once we get that going it should streamline the process!