Getting After Effects project properties and metadata programatically

Hi,
I'm building a render-farm and I'd like to extract some of the adobe after effects project fields from an .aep or .aepx file. To me it makes more sense to send the start and end frames to be rendered to each individual machine rather than depend on the shared folder feature. If this is possible, the project metadata in projects saved as xml doesn't seem to contain this information in plain text.
If there is a command line tool that can scan an AE project and print out information such as fps, duration, compositions, that would be perfect.
Thank you,
Conrado

Mylenium -
I found the information I needed - this is a huge one for me, since I organize all of my projects using Bridge - I just discovered that in Bridge, if you go into the XMP Metadata by right-clicking the .mov file, the window which opens has a Tab view - the second from the end is Advanced. If you then roll open the Schema entry, under creatorAtom:aeProjectLink (struct), lo and behold, there sits the project name with the full path!
This is huge, in terms of being able to pinpoint the project which created the final output on my system.
Joe Bourke
Bourke Media

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HELP! My After Effects project is complete, but when I render out and playback the video is a lot faster then the original playback.

I have finished my After Effects project. The project includes a lot of text and fade ins and outs and looks perfect in the playback. But once I render and playback with Quicktime the video does not look the same. The animations are very jumpy. Please help!
Thanks,
David V

Hey David,
Also, my AE comp is 29.97, but i have four other comps in that one and they're 23.97 fps.
It seems like that would be the likely culprit. Is there a specific reason those comps (which are, I assume, nested inside the 29.97 one?) are 23.976? Do they contain 23.976fps footage? Mixing of comps, video and different frame rates can often cause juddery playback after rendering, as the interpolation of the frame rates to the master render frame rate happens without any interaction on the user's part. But AE gives many different options (and techniques, everyone has their own) to assist with getting the frame rates and speeds more aligned so the final frame rate is perfect for them all. It takes a little planning, that's all.
Let me know, I'll be glad to help if this is the issue.
Steve
Steve Holmes
Creative Director
Energi.design, Munich

Adobe Creative Cloud because I do not get After Effects among others but I try to install software from the page but I give After Effects download shareware and says downloading but nothing comes give him retrying but nothing even leave the application of

if you can help me please alguin
Adobe Creative Cloud because I do not get After Effects among others but I try to install software from the page but I give After Effects download shareware and says downloading but nothing comes give him retrying but nothing even leave the application of Adobe Creative but nothing help

Without proper system info and otehr technical details nobody can tell you anything.
Mylenium

Do I need to uninstall my trial version of CS6 and install using disk to get After Effects?

Do I need to uninstall my trial version of CS6 and install using disk to get After Effects?

No, the trial version is identical to the purchased version in every aspect other than the time limitation. Besides, the boxed version will probably be LR 4.0 and then need to be updated. To cancel the time limit simply supply the registration key from the back of the box in Help/Registration.

Illustrator and after effects workflow - versions and templates

Hi all
I'm looking to take some templates from illustrator, across to ae, animate and have a master version for a template.
Is there a way I can easily copy my master AE file, and then replace all the master illustrator files within it, with the new versions for a new template, so that everything animates the same etc, but if I change some text or something, the change will come in. I will be creating a bunch of pre animated symbols that can just be dragged and dropped, adding universal colour controls and converting any text to editable to use animation presets etc. So in the main, this versioning won't matter as most of it will be done entirely in AE without a regular graphics program. HOWEVER. I want my workflow to be sensible and I don't want to end up making copies of crap or working inefficiently.
I'd normally just copy and paste a new illustrator file over the top, same name, same layers. That works ok. However with this I'm gonna need versioning etc/ or to at least know which illustrator file is different.
I DONT want this work in a way that I wouldn't have to go into my layers folder and copy and replace each layer!!
The only way that I've come up with is to keep my masters as masters. Folder them away and never touch them other than to copy them.
Copy the masters into a new titled folder. Then open up the AE proj and rename that. Now my main problem is replacing the Illustrator files. My first idea was to rename the master files. Hopefully after effects would still understand where they are and not make me replace these layers?
Then once they are renamed, bring in the template to over write them, copy and replace, and it should all be hunky dory.
Does anyone know what I'm talking about or experienced creating templates like this before?
Thanks for any help.

You seem to understand the basics here but let me make a few points just to clarify what has to happen to make your workflow efficient and keep the animations working.
You can save any After Effects project file as a template by doing a save as command from the file menu. That will get you to step one. If you created your project by importing your master Illustrator file as a composition with either option selected you can automatically replace all of the layers in the project using a single right click browse and click if you follow a couple of rules.
The AI file must have exactly the same layer names, number of layers, and layers must be exactly the same size
The AI file must have exactly the same name
The replacement file must be in a different folder
Follow those rules and you can just open the Illustrator template, select the folder with your replacement footage, and then select one of the layers in the you want to replace and choose replace footage.
A simpler option, the option you described as setting up a bunch of duplicates, would be to create a new folder for each of your versions. Create your master Illustrator file and AE project inside the Master older. Now Copy and paste the original AE file into each of the version folders. Now simply open each Illustrator file inside each version folder and edit the content making sure that you follow the rules above. Now when you open the AE file inside the Version folder you will not have to replace the footage.
Here are a few problems with this workflow. First, your animations may not work if you change the size of any layer in the AI file. Second, you end up with a bunch of duplicate file names on your system. Third, It's hard to keep things straight.
There are other approaches. The first would be to create an animation preset for each of the layers in your master file. Just press UU to reveal all changed properties in a selected layer, select everything that is animated. If there are expressions in the layer make sure the properties with the expressions are also selected then go to the menu and select Animate>Save Animation Preset. When you have all of the animated layers in your composition saved as animation presets you can then start a new AE project, import your AI file as a composition exactly as you did before, and then select the layers one at a time and apply the animation presets to the appropriate layers.
This avoids the duplicate file name issue and allows a different version for each Project.
Another option is to use scripting to create a script that replaces all layers in a composition with a new source file. Here again, you must design your animation to either work with layers of different sizes or all of the layers in the new footage must be exactly the same size as the original master AI file.
Probably the best option would be to design your project so that the majority of the layers would be the same and come from a master file, then add another file that contains only the elements that you want to change. Most of my template projects involve text changes only and the text does not come from Illustrator, it comes from text layers. I'm referring to lower thirds. In that case I use a script that creates comps from spreadsheets. I simply load up the master template file with the master artwork, have a spreadsheet created with the data I need to replace, then run the script and a project with a bunch of new comps is automatically created and sent to the render cue to create the digital intermediates or sent to the Adobe Media Encoder for rendering the deliverable files.
To tell you the absolute truth, most of the work that I do that seems to be kind of like the work you are describing just involves opening an Illustrator file as a comp and applying a few animation presets to the layers. I have about 300 custom animation presets in my library that can be used on any layer of any size to create motion. Here's one of my favorites. It causes any sized layer at any scale to fly in, bounce then drop out of the frame no matter what size the comp. The only thing you have to set is the in and out point of the layer.
Dropbox - flyInBounceDropOut.ffx

FEATURE REQUEST: After Effects style Placeholders and Proxies

If you feel the needs in efficient proxy workflow, welcome to the club and don't hesitate to submit feature request.
Here is the adjusted to less than 2000 symbols feature request text:
***After Effects style Placeholders and Proxies***
It would be nice if PrPro offered AE style Placeholders and Proxies workflow. There are cases, where they are extremely useful, e.g.:
1. Huge modern formats and resource hungry codecs. Not all machines can easily handle 2k or 4k footages, some can't get real time playback even with AVCHD. Not to mention that CinemaDNG importer was discontinued partly because of inability to get real time playback in PrPro. The issue can be resolved via rendering previews, but that's not always the most efficient workflow.
2. In multicam editing issues mentioned above increase dramatically. Rendering preview for every camera angle is simply impossible. Although PrPro offers offline clips workflow, an editor can't easily see if the clip is currently linked to a source footage or a proxy, and switching between sources and proxies involves several steps every time one needs to switch: selecting assets, making them offline, right-clicking again to link to other media, locating files on a disk; while in After Effects it's just one click once a proxy is set.
3. Adobe Dynamic Link. PrPro communicates with AE projects via single instance of headless AE, which creates a bottleneck and entails the need to render DI for complex comps. Although AE allows to set DIs as proxies and, hence, enjoy the best of both worlds, instantly switching between DI and dynamically linked comp and no needs to replace anything in PrPro timeline, with hundreds of dynamically linked comps PrPro timeline becomes unresponsive and takes forever to render (for my rig test 30 min sequence built out of 935 dynamically linked comps, which are just source footages in their own comps, hence, the equivalent to rendered DIs set to proxies, takes around 27 hours to render, while 30 min sequence built out of the same 935 source footages renders in real time). Meanwhile, PrPro doesn't currently allow to link offline dynamically linked comps to rendered DIs.

As the person who maintains the feature request database for After Effects, I can confirm that the number of times an item has been requested is a major factor when we consider what to work on next. So are other factors, such as how hard the feature is to implement and maintain, how much testing is involved (often the larger concern than programming time), whether the request conflicts with something else that we are already working on, and so on. It is true that we consider not just raw numbers of requests but the details of who is making the requests---e.g., whether the requests are coming from animators or compositors, beginners or experts.
I can only speak for the After Effects team, but the Premiere Pro team works much the same way (which is unsurprising, since we are in the same group and have overlapping team members).
We also try to give some visibility into the most requested items with posts like this:
http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2012/12/top-feature-requests-for-after-effects-in-2012 .html

After Effects CS6: Cache and Reload Footage Problem

After Effects CS6: Cache and Reload Footage Problem
I am having trouble getting my footage to update in an AE project.
In an existing project, there is an image sequence in a composition. I have saved and closed AE, modified the footage (same dimensions and qty. of frames, only the pixel data changes), and then re-launched AE and opened the project. Though I have changed the footage, the old content still appears.
To resolve this, I have done the following:
Edit>Purge>All Memory
Edit>Purge>Image Cache Memory
Edit>Preferences>Media & Disk Cache>Empty Disk Cache
Edit>Preferences>Media & Disk Cache>Clean Database & Cache
From the Project window I've selected all footage and selected Reload
None of these got the footage to update. I could double-click on the footage in the project bin and scrub the play head and the old footage was still displayed.
Finally I had to replace the footage with itself and that resolved the issue.
If this is operator error, lack of understanding the cache functions, or something else, I'd appreciate some assistance. I don't recall this behavior in CS 5.5, so I am guessing this is a change in CS 6.
Win 7 Pro 64bit Service Pack 1
Intel Xeon CPU X5450 @ 3.00 GHz 2.99 GHz
RAM 20 GB

about Illustrator and Photoshop files in CS6 especially - you should work with Ctrl/Cmd+E (Edit Original).
when in Ae and you want to change a source file, use this command on one of the layers
from the source file you wish to change (doesn't matter if its in the timeline or project window) and
your original software linked to that file will open.
when you work this way you make AE reload that file and any change after that will be seen back in AE immediately.
it is also very convenient way to work because there can be no confusion on which file you are on
if you work with multiple source files for example.
even if you made the change with your Photoshop/Illustrator opened file and got back to Ae
and didn't see any change - press on one of the layers Ctrl/Cmd+E and this will refresh it immediately.
This is the case in CS6.
in CC I have noticed that any change I make is refreshed immediately in Ae as if it rechecks the changes all the time,
and didn't even need to use Ctrl/Cmd+E but it's a good habit all the same.
didn't come across a case where that didn't work for be but
if all fails you could always change the folder location of the file, let Ae lose it, then replace footage of the file,
and thus let Ae re-link it back.

HELP: My Videohive After Effects project is rendering artifacts! AE CS6

Hi all,
HP-HPE 510t
i7 2600 @ 3.4GHz
16GB Ram
Windows 8 x64bit
Nvidia GTX 660 Ti
I purchased a Videohive After Effects project with motion gfx and video, and it is rendering artifacts in two places.
I'm exporting Quicktime + animation, tried + PNG, and + photo jpeg but all with the same results.
I even contacted the author but he cannot explain why either. The interesting thing is, it renders beautifully without any artifacts in AE.
Only on the export render do I see the black silhouette artifacts. Below are some photos of what I mean.
Please help? i'm trying to export the highest quality for youtube and am going to H.264 the lossless version.
It looks correct in AE:
[URL=http://s10.photobucket.com/user/mystickid/media/ItisworkingcorrectlyinAE.png.html][IMG]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a135/mystickid/ItisworkingcorrectlyinAE.png[/IMG][/URL]
But with black artifacts in lossless render?
[URL=http://s10.photobucket.com/user/mystickid/media/promoartifact2.png.html][IMG]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a135/mystickid/promoartifact2.png[/IMG][/URL]
[URL=http://s10.photobucket.com/user/mystickid/media/promoartifact3.png.html][IMG]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a135/mystickid/promoartifact3.png[/IMG][/URL]
http://s10.photobucket.com/user/mystickid/media/promoartifact1.png.html

Thank Rick,
Only reason that I'm using photobucket instead of the built-in image embeddor (camera icon), is because it doesn't seem to be working for me. All I get is an empty dialog box, tried also with video but that one seems to be working properly.
maybe ill try firefox.
any solutions for the artifacts??
My output module settings so far have been..
tried:
1) Quicktime + Animation (lossless) quality 100
2) Quicktime + photo jpg
3) Quicktime + PNG (lossless) quality 100
4) Quicktime + H.264 30mbps
tried rendering again with "Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously" turned off...still getting artifacts only on these text offset animation frames.
still looks perfect while in after effects.. I restarted my computer, I cannot figure this out.
Help!

How to get after effects to be working properly

Im having some trouble getting after effects to work. Whenever i install after effects (Even as a trial), it sucessfully installs. But, whenever i open it, it alwyas says:
"please uninstall and reinstall the product.
Error: 5"
i already reinstalled it about 3 times already, but still no hope. I also have photoshop and dreamweaver, but they work perfectly fine.
Im on a mac running Mac OS X version 10.6.7. Model is apple imac mb950ll/a 21.5 inch desktop
plz help i have a school project and rlly need it

There is an application for Macs from Adobe that removes all traces of a previous install, which then allows a reinstall to go smoothly.
I don't know its name, I've never had to use it, I wouldn't know where to find it, I simply know it exists. I hope someone else with the actual knowledge chimes in.

Make an edit to an After Effects Project

I have an After Effects project to introduce a new logo. Someone built it for us, but out logo has changed slightly. We cannot reach the designer who did it originally, I just need to replace the PNG he used with our new one without changing any animation or effects. Is there a way to do this?

If you open the project and import your new asset all you need to do is find the layer containing the footage you want to replace. Once you find that footage, locate it in the Project panel and select it there. Observe the size of the image. Make sure that your new image is the same size. If necessary resize it in Photoshop. Now, with the original footage selected in the time line move to the Project panel and select the new footage. You then hold down the Alt/Option key and simply drag the new footage to the timeline and it will replace the original.
Problems arise when the replacement footage is a different size than the original, but other than that, things should work just fine. It may even be helpful to open the original file in Photoshop and drag your new file on top if the original so you can properly adjust the size.

After Effects 7.0 and Quicktime Plugin Conflict

Hello "forum-ers",
I'm using Adobe After Effects 7.0, and i've created a video in the same.I want to use this video in Adobe Flash CS3.Neither the flv nor the Quicktime formats are available in the render queue options.I presume its because i do not have Quicktime installed.But if i try to install Quicktime, AE wouldn't load.It displays a message, error while loading plug-in "Scripting", and then crashes.So, i guess there's a shared plugin somewhere in between the two.
So if i use QT,i cant open AE.If i use AE,i cant save in QT.Similar problem lies in Flash, and its CS3 Encoder.Without installing QT, it displays a message : install DirectShow 9 "and" Quicktime 7.
Any help appreciated!
Many Thankx,

I'm sorry to hear that. Sounds like something is severely mixed up on your system. Do you by any chance use some widget-y system extensions? Users have reported some funny things going on when e.g. MenuMaster or specific news feed widgets are installed. In any case, since for the time being you seem to be stuck with no QT in AE, you should work with TIFF files and PSDs. Both formats are reasonably compressed (for TIFF, enable the LZW option), support 16bpc and they are handled by native Adobe loaders/ savers, which should eliminate any potential interference side effects from your defunct QT routines. In addition, TIFFs can play almost realtime in AE just like some QT CoDecs, which helps when scrubbing through a complex project.
Mylenium

Opening a really old After Effects Project

I had some work come through where I needed to revisit some AE v5.5 projects. But CS5.5 or CS5 wouldn't open them. I had to reinstall my AE v7.0 to open them. Then I used CS5.5 to open the AE 7.0 project. (And I would have been screwed if I was using Lion because there's no Rosetta to run AE 7).
I vaguely remember a chart showing what versions can open up what. I'm assuming this is a 64-bit issue?

I've never seen a chart, but each version of the Help document says what can open what.
Here are the relevant notes from After Effects CS5 and CS5.5 Help:
Note: After Effects CS5 can open and import After Effects projects created by After Effects 6.0 and later.
Note: After Effects CS5.5 can open and import After Effects projects created by After Effects 6.5 and later.
> I'm assuming this is a 64-bit issue?
It's a development and testing issue. If we say that something works, we test the bejeezus out of it. If we attempted to keep project import back to After Effects 1.0 projects, we'd have to spend a lot of testing time (and some development time) on that, and that would keep us from developing and testing new features. And we know that the rare cases in which people do need to open very old projects can be dealt with by the workaround that you used.

After Effects project not updating

Hi
I have an issue with media encoder, when I use media encoder to render a After Effects project and then need to make a change to the original AE project and re render I’m finding that the change is not reflected when I re open that file in media encoder.
I take it that media encoder is caching the file but then why is the cached version not updating?
Any help please

What version of After Effects and AME do you have?
After you make your changes in After Effects, you should use the Composition > Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue command, which was new in After Effects CC (12.0). Alternately, you can drag the comp from the Project panel in After Effects to the Queue panel in AME.
Otherwise you'll need to quit and restart AME to force it to reload the project.
Under the hood, AME reads After Effects comps using Dynamic Link, which loads a copy of your After Effects project in the background. If you save changes into your After Effects project file while Dynamic Link still has that copy loaded into memory, that copy is not affected. (This is a bug. You're welcome to file a bug report about it.) Only in the case where AME has flushed that copy from memory would it reload the project file and see the updates, which may happen if AME needs the memory space and will always happen if you quit AME.
The difference with the Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue command, or dragging the comp from After Effects to AME (in After Effects CC (12.0) and later) is that every time you do this, a temporary copy of your project file on disk is created with the current state of the comp. Having that updated project as a unique file avoids the issue of Dynamic Link needing to update the previous instance of the project.

My name is dagur i downloaded the adobe after effects cc trial and i dont know how to licence it?

My name is dagur i downloaded the adobe after effects cc trial and i dont know how to licence it? and i live in iceland is it even posible to get it here?

You pay for a Cloud account (if possible in your country) and the program is activated when you log in to your paid Cloud account
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/faq.html
http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/install-apps.html
Cloud Plans https://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud/buying-guide.html
http://forums.adobe.com/community/download_install_setup/creative_cloud_faq
what is http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/creative-cloud-desktop.html
Cloud Getting Started https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/topics/getting-started.html

Encore DVD 2.0 on Windows: Composition background color of dynamically linked After Effects projects

Hello,
I used Adobe Dynamic Link to import an After Effects project, and I saw that in Encore the background color of a composition is set to black even though it is defined with another value in After Effects.
I had to open the project in AE and place a solid layer with the desired color behind all other layers.
What are the causes for this behaviour? Did I do something wrong or is it a bug?
Best regards,
Christian Kirchhoff

The composition background is transparent. It has per se no color and does not react to blendmodes and such. It's imaginable that Encore resets it to black for whatever reason (wouldn't know, as I design my menus always with full frame backgrounds to begin with). Still, I would consider it a bug regardless, so please fiel away:
http:www.adobe.com/go/wish
Mylenium

Getting After Effects project properties and metadata programatically

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