Release — Templater 3.4.0

[Jeff]

The Dataclay team has just released Templater version 3.4.0, which adds some exciting new features, improvements, and bug fixes. Thank you for being so patient. Enjoy!

WHAT’S NEW IN 3.4

Templater 3.4 offers several new features, significant UI changes in Templater Preferences, and two new events that can be scripted against.

• Templater Autograf Rigging Utilities and Dynamic Subtitles

  Autograf Rigging Utilities are purpose-built utilities for common applications of customized video compositions and replicates.

  The first utility to be released by Dataclay is Dynamic Subtitles. This utility enables users to automate the addition of closed captions, translations, audio descriptions, and other onscreen text. The result it is a substantial increase the production speed for videos which require subtitles.

  Additional rigging utilities are planned for future releases. Developers can even create their own rigging utilities and optionally share these with the Templater community.

• Dynamic Text Styling

  Taking full advantage of After Effects 2024 capabilities, Templater now supports dynamic text styling. With this release, the font-face and direction properties can be styled directly from your data source. Support for additional properties is planned for future releases.

• Time Sculpting Preview Focus

  A new setting is available in Templater Preferences for customers who use Time Sculpting. This setting helps you better see the effects of your Time Sculpting setup when previewing target compositions. Because this setting has a major effect on the author experience, it is disabled by default and should only be used with Time Sculpting.

• Reorganized Settings in Templater Preferences Dialog

  The Templater Preferences dialog has been reorganized and streamlined to make it easier for you to configure settings. The configurable options have not changed, just their presentation.

• New Templater Event: Footage Download

  The new footage download event can be used in Shell Scripts, ExtendScripts, and the command line interface (CLI) where needed. This makes it easier for users to apply their own pre- or post-download processing before updating the target composition. This event only applies to remote footage.

• New Templater Event: Footage Processing

  The new footage processing event can be used in Shell Scripts, ExtendScripts, and the command line interface (CLI) where needed. This makes it easier for users to apply their own processing pre- or post-AE and Templater video processing before updating the target composition. This event applies to both local and remote footage. It does not apply to footage created within the AE project file (that is, footage that is itself an AE comp).

• Feature Enhancement: Flags

  Flags let you manipulate some properties of dynamic layers from within your data sources. Users can now wrap terms used as flags in either double braces {{ }} or double brackets [[ ]]. Previously, only double braces could be used.

• New Reserved Column and Property Names

  With introduction of Dynamic Subtitles, there are three new reserved column names: srt-data, srt-bg, srt-display

• New Bot Property Keys for Templater Events

  In support of the new Footage Download and Footage Processing events, there are 12 new Bot property keys for use in the command line interface (CLI):

  • pre_cmd_ftg
  • pre_cmd_ftg_async
  • pre_jsx_ftg
  • pre_cmd_dl
  • pre_cmd_dl_async
  • pre_jsx_dl
  • post_cmd_ftg
  • post_cmd_ftg_async
  • post_jsx_ftg
  • post_cmd_dl
  • post_cmd_dl_async
  • post_jsx_dl
     

• New Pre-defined Argument Macros for Shell Scripts

  In support of the new Footage Download and Footage Processing events, there are 11 new pre-defined argument macros for use in shell scripts:

  • $dl_file_uri
  • $dl_file_name
  • $dl_file_dir
  • $dl_file_mime
  • $dl_file_ext
  • $dl_file
  • $ftg_layer
  • $ftg_name
  • $ftg_file
  • $ftg_dir
  • $ftg_ext
     

• New Object Methods for ExtendScript API

  In support of the new Footage Download and Footage Processing events, there are four new object methods for use in ExtendScripts:

  • $D.download()
  • $D.footage.layer()
  • $D.footage.source()
  • $D.footage.item()

FIXES in 3.4.0

• The following issues have been fixed in this release:

  • With the release of After Effects 24.3, an intrusive confirmation dialog would spawn if the “Purge all memory caches after each job” was enabled.

  • The Templater Time Sculpting algorithm broke when nested compositions were part of its layer reconfiguration.

  • In scenarios where an audio-only layer with a Templater Settings effect applied to it had time-based parameters configured to monitor sibling layers, users received this unwanted After Effects error dialog: After Effects invalid image buffer size (0x0) (37 :: 102).

  • In a particular scenario, the Templater layout algorithm broke and cascaded throughout the After Effects project. This happened if a composition contained both layers that can not have effects applied, such as Camera or Light layers, together with layers assigned to a Templater layer group.