Create a dynamic After Effects "slideshow" template with a variable number of video clips [updated]

[Jon]

[Updated to incorporate the comp switching feature of Templater 2.9, instead of using imported video footage – if you are using an earlier version of Templater, use a 2-frame double-framerate transparent video clip instead of a comp, included in v1 of the zip]

Let’s say that you have an After Effects template that you want to dynamically expand and contract the timeline duration based not just on the duration of the video clips, but also having the number of video clips in the timeline change from video to video.

Note: this technique will create a 1-frame overlap between your clips

In this example, we’re going to set up a Main timeline, and we will set things up to have a maximum of 3 precomped video “slides” that we will be injecting video clips into. For this example, we are going to assume that you want to play each clip for its entire duration, but the same principles can be applied to clips with various shift, trim, and stretch Time Sculpting parameters.

First, import a piece of video footage-- this is just a temporary placeholder (don’t use an AE placeholder layer, though). Create 3 (or how ever many you need) precomps, each with the placeholder footage added to the timeline, and apply the Templater Settings effect to each of the layers. Be sure to rename them to match your column names in your data source (in my example I named them “first,” second," and “third”). For each footage layer you’ll want to set your “Time” parameters to “Comp starts at in point” and “Comp ends at out point” and your “Trim” parameters to “Preserve start” and “Preserve end” so that the entirety of the clip plays and that the duration of the precomp is the exactly the same as the duration of the clip it contains.

For each precomped “slide” in the main timeline, you will also apply the Templater Settings effect, and each will have the various Time Sculpting controls set as follows (note the “shift” parameter with the 1 frame shift overlap on every clip after the first one):

The last piece of the puzzle is to use a 2-frame long empty comp that is exactly double the framerate of the slide precomps that you will call in your datasource when you want to turn a specific slide off for a particular render. The comp needs to be 2 frames because a video clip that is 1 frame long will be recognized as a still by AE/Templater, and it won’t properly adjust your precomp durations. The comp itself can be extremely small, dimensionally (say, 4px x4px). In my example, “blank-slide” is the 2-frame transparent comp. To call the blank-slide comp, you will want to wrap the name of the comp in double braces within your data, like {{blank-slide}}.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask here, or shoot us an email.

Download dynamic slides example project - v1

Download dynamic slides example project - v2

[this thread has been updated to incorporate the framerate advice from Maris, a few posts below]

[ariestav]

@Jon This is awesome. Thank you for sharing this quick and easy follow to get up and running with a dynamic slideshow.

[Maris]

To Avoid the 1-Frame Issue we did the following:

Create a 2-Frame Comp with a really high framerate (whatever the current version of AE supports) and export it as a tiny Quicktime. That file will be effectively handled as a 1-Frame footage without being a infinite-time-layer.

So basicly the same as above, just adjust the framerate!