@1337err

We can take a look at the templater.log and templater.err files to see if there’s any additional information there, but from my experience, I doubt that there will be anything more specific than what we’ve already got. Unfortunately, AE tends to be a bit vague with its error syntax.

However, if we can reliably re-create the error, we should be able to use the technique that I outlined in my previous post to narrow things down relatively quickly. In the past, I’ve done this by making a copy of the file with the problem, opening it, and bulk deleting 50% of the assets in the Project panel. Depending on whether the error persists, we should be able to logically assess which half of the project data contains the error.

Once we figure that out, we can repeat the process by either restoring the deleted assets and deleting the other 50% or by deleting 50% of what’s left and checking whether the error reoccurs. By chopping out increasingly smaller chunks of the project, we should be able to get a bead on what layers are causing the issue without a massive amount of undue work. Hopefully that helps to get things moving in the right direction.

Thanks,

Jeff

@ermalr

If you continue to have issues with speed and performance over time, I’d recommend getting in touch with us directly at support@dataclay.com so we can get some more specific details on how the project is configured.

Outside of enabling the “Remove unused footage after each job” and “Purge all memory caches after each job” in the Templater Preferences panel, as @ariestav mentioned, it might be necessary to take a look at the templater.log file to see if we can narrow down exactly where the issue is occurring.

Let’s start by enabling those options, and if we still run into issues, go ahead and send us a message, and we’ll see if we can’t make some more specific suggestions based on the project’s operating environment.

Thanks,

Jeff

@1337err I’ve had a similar problem with my replication just stops and keeps crashing/loading until I eventually force quit AE. In my case it was a special character in the “output” filename (a “€” sign) that caused the crash. Replaced it with “eur” and things are running smoothly again. Haven’t read your thread thoroughly, so might not be the case for your project, just thought I’d give a shout.

@ermalr

It’s difficult to say without more specific information about the layer in question, but it’s possible that it could be a format issue, a logic problem with Time Sculpting, or some other issue that’s not immediately apparent.

One technique that might help to find more detailed information would be to temporarily uncheck the “Suppress all After Effects notices, warning, and error dialogs” in the Templater Preferences panel. This option is meant to keep Templater running in the event that AE displays a dialog box, which would halt the reversioning process until it’s clicked away. This can sometimes result in a scenario where After Effects error dialogs are hidden during the layout and preview process. Temporarily unchecking this option may allow us to see a more detailed error message when the project is previewed, which could help us get a better idea of what’s going on.

However, it should be noted that as of the most recent release of Templater, all After Effects errors should be logged to the templater.err file, so this is less of an issue than it used to be. Based on the previously posted information, it seems the After Effects error is " An unexpected error occurred while exporting a composition." Unfortunately, this error is so vague that troubleshooting the issue would likely require much more information about the project file, the layer in question, and any dependent layers it might be referring to.

If unchecking that option in the Templater Preferences panel doesn’t change anything, it might be worthwhile to try removing any Time Sculpting and/or Expressions from the layer to see if that changes anything. Either way, with an error this vague, we would need to find out more information about how things are set up in order to make a better suggestion about what’s causing the issue.

Thanks,

Jeff

@ermalr To add to Jeff’s post, Templater ships with both Render Settings and Output Module templates that can add multiple pre-made presets. There are direction on this page on how to import them into After Effects.

@ermalr yes, you use the Time Sculpting rules to accomplish this. Watch the videos in this playlist.

You can also register ExtendScripts to Templater events to manipulate and alter things in your project for each re-version. You can learn more about that by reading the docs on event scripts and Templater’s ExtendScript API. If you’re going to go that route you would probably register your script to the “After Update” event.

I think Time Sculpting is what you’re looking for though. Let us know if this help! Thanks!

@vreddhi-bhat

Glad to hear that you were able to resolve the problem. If you run into any other issues or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out, and we’ll be more than happy to help.

Happy rendering!

Jeff

@Jeff Just to close the loop on this. Support informed me that the comment field in each marker needs to be filled in for the Spot Check feature to work. Problem solved.

@jeff Thank you! No wonder I couldn’t get those .aep files directly into Media Encoder. I’ll look into AfterCodecs. That could be a great alternative to a watch folder workflow for just one type of deliverable.

@citizensam It’s difficult to say. I don’t think it’ll have that significant of an impact, but I haven’t done a head-to-head comparison before. AfterCodecs does have more efficient compression for h264/mp4 files than Adobe’s, but that’s not necessarily related to render speed. At least a part of the render time can be due to calculating compression, so sometimes it could be an option to test rendering to an intermediate lossless codec and then transcoding to mp4 with an extra step like Media Encoder or FFMPEG. Depending on the workflow you’re building, those might not be ideal, but it’s another avenue of exploration when you’re trying to shave off any time you can.

@citizensam

Absolutely! New settings can be added to the “Render Settings” or “Output Module” through the existing After Effects tools located under the Edit>Templates menu. Once the new options are added, they should show up in the Templater panel once the “Load Settings & Module Templates” button is pressed.

As a quick side note, it might also be useful to use the module and render-settings reserved columns to set the output settings using information from the Data Source the project is using. As long as the data in these two columns match up with valid options in the “Render Settings” and “Output Module” options in AE, Templater should use them when each row is processed. This can be useful if we need to switch between different output modules on the fly.

Hopefully, that helps, but if you run into any issues, please feel free to get in touch, and we’ll do whatever we can to help out.

Thanks,

Jeff

@jeff Thank you Jeff. Taking one part of the custom name directly from AE was the stuff i was looking for, so i can use output column in google sheets that would be combined by Templater with AE’s compositions’ names, but its not a big deal. Just thought it might be possible, since plugin is all about automating stuff. If for some reason its hard to do, its not a big problem.

@jasontcox we’ve also used something called gifsicle, which is a command line tool for optimizing gifs (homepage). What you do in this case, you render a version from AE’s render queue, then you do a post-render action to transcode to gif with ffmpeg and then compress with gifsicle. These event scripts require Templater Bot. You’ll need to add gifsicle and ffmpeg to your SYSTEM PATH.

Here’s an example of a script (Windows BAT file) that I’ve used. Feel free to use it as a baseline to remix for your own purposes. (No warranties implied)

@ECHO ON SET RENDER="%~1" SET RPATH=%~dp1 SET ID=%~n1 SET FRAMERATE="15" SET SCALE="0" SET COLORS="256" SET PALETTE="%RPATH%palette.png" SET FILTERS=fps=%FRAMERATE%,scale=%SCALE%:-1:flags=lanczos SET GIFOUT="%RPATH%gifs\%ID%.gif" SET GIFCOMP="%RPATH%gifs-lossy\%ID%.gif" SET FULLRES="%RPATH%full-res" SET GIFFINAL="N:\email-campaigns\newsletter" ffmpeg -v warning -i %RENDER% -vf %FILTERS%,palettegen=stats_mode=diff:max_colors=%COLORS% -y %PALETTE% ffmpeg -i %RENDER% -i %PALETTE% -loop 0 -lavfi "%FILTERS% [x]; [x][1:v] paletteuse=dither=bayer:bayer_scale=3" -vcodec gif -y %GIFOUT% gifsicle %GIFOUT% -O3 --lossy=200 --output %GIFCOMP% move /Y %RENDER% %FULLRES% copy /Y %GIFCOMP% %GIFFINAL%

@veteos

Thanks for letting us know what you found. This diagnosis aligns with our assumption that that error is caused by a logic problem with a Time Sculpting layer. Hopefully, this will help in troubleshooting this sort of problem if it comes up again in the future.

Thanks again!

@jeff Thanks a lot! And thanks for the link to the reserved column names. I couldn’t find that in the website but rushing with a project and learning in the way I’m sure I missed that…

Thanks again!

@amesdigital

Thanks for getting in touch with us. The scenario that you’ve described should be possible using Templater. In fact, with the correct setup, you shouldn’t need to edit the AE file directly. Using a few of Templater’s basic features, you should be able to control the text content and the composition selection entirely from your data source.

Swapping out the contents of a text field is one of the most basic and useful features of Templater. Once Templater is installed and connected to your data source of choice (Google Sheet, QUE Campaign, or local file), simply rename the layer to match the column/data point in question and apply the Templater Effect. Once that’s done, Templater should swap the text in the corresponding layer during the Preview or Render process.

As far as swapping out a composition, Templater has a reserved column named target that can be used to designate which .aep file Templater should load for each set of data. This should allow you to swap out the project file on the fly to whichever the end-user desires.

Finally, if you wanted to automate the process, you could always use Templater Bot to monitor your data source for new entries continuously. There’s another reserved column named render-status that Templater Bot searches for continuously. When a line of data is added with a render-status of “ready” Templater Bot will bring in the data and process the video.

Those are the basics, but if you have any other questions, please feel free to let us know.

Thanks!

@jeff AMAZING! Thank you for such a quick response! Got it working now. I was just able to pump out a list of 150 dealerships to Youtube ready MP4’s in just over 20 mins… Templater fricking rules. You can expect a new customer within a week or so!