Templater doesn't import every footage
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Hello everybody, I have a problem and hope somebody can help me out here.
I prepared an AE file with Templater, I have around 90 footage files that should be exchanged by Templater.
For that I created a placeholder for every file I need and named them accordingly, I prepared a Google Sheet with those names and the names of the files they should be replaced with. I checked that every layer has the Templater effect on it.
But when I run the preview Templater only finds half of the files, the weird thing is, that he doesn’t replace the files he didn’t find with those missing PNGs, the placeholders are still here.
I checked the names in AE and the file names and there are no typos, so now I’m wondering what’s going on.
I hope that this doesn’t have something to do with the Templater version I bought.
I bought the cheapest version (Rig) because it has all the features I need.
The Templater Log doesn’t show any weird things aswell -
Hmmm, that’s quite odd. Without a bit more specific information, I can’t be entirely sure what’s going on here, but I can suggest a few things that might help with what you’re seeing.
First, you mentioned that you had added Placeholders to your project. If, by that, you mean AE Placeholders (added through File>Import>Placeholder), we don’t recommend that as a method for adding footage to a project any longer. Adobe changed the way Placeholder layers work a while back in a way that makes them somewhat incompatible with Templater. Instead, we recommend just adding a new layer of the appropriate type (image, video, text) to the project and then applying Templater. If Templater is added to a Placeholder layer, it might not be able to interpret the incoming data correctly and may designate the layer as the wrong “type”.
Another common issue that might be causing a problem could be related to using URL sources for image layers. After Effects is currently unable to resolve URLs into a usable file that Templater can read, so if a URL source is needed, it needs to be relatively simple. Right now, the easiest way to check this is to make sure that the URL ends in the file extension of the type of file being processed, like this:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49848795101_9ed04dae30_k.jpgMore complex URLs that require code resolution may not work with Templater and could be causing the type of issue you’re experiencing.
If neither of those suggestions resolves the issue, we’ll probably need to get some more information that you may not be comfortable sharing publicly, like screenshots of the project, more details on the file structure, and a mirror of the data source. If you end up needing to dig into this further, it might be better to get in touch with us at support@dataclay.com so that we can take a look at those assets in a more private setting.
Let us know how we can help, and we’ll take it from there.
Thanks!
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@jeff
thanks for the reply
It’ll probably be the Placeholder issue, like you said, I created the AE placeholders like it was done in the videos.
for the file URL I use a filepath link to my GDrive, directly from the file browser, so that should be fine.I will definitly try changing the placeholders then, and if that doesn’t work I’ll contact support.
Thank you very much. -
@jeff
Hey Jeff
is it possibly for you to provide a small example?
I’m not sure I quite understood how you meant it by “adding a new layer of the appropriate type”.
I changed all my layers with actual footage, the Templater effect is still on there and now not one of those files get’s changed when I click preview -
All I meant was to add an asset of the same type that you want to swap out. So, for example, if you’re looking to swap images, add an image. If you’re looking to swap a video, drag in a video. Once the asset has been added to the timeline, simply rename it to match the appropriate data point and apply the Templater Effect.
That being said, if you’re using assets located in a Google Drive, chances are, that will be an issue. Google Drive links resolve to a URL rather than a direct link to the uploaded asset. This is done so that people don’t use Google Drive as a virtual hosting service for images or video files for other websites. Unfortunately, this also makes hosted content on Google Drives incompatible with Templater.
The problem is that the URL that Google Drive provides doesn’t point to the actual asset. It points to a web page that hosts the asset. After Effects is unable to parse that URL and can only recognize those links as a webpage of some sort. We’ve seen this happen in the past, which is why we typically recommend using something like Typeform or an AWS bucket for remote hosting, as these services will provide you with the sort of link that Templater can read.
One way to test this would be to make a copy of your data source, download the files locally, change the links, and see if Templater can swap them out. If Templater can successfully reversion the project with locally hosted files, then the issue is almost certainly that the files hosted on the Google Drive aren’t being presented in a format that After Effects can read.
Thanks!
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@jeff
oh, thank you for clarifying
