What's New

Templater Changelog

For details on each release of Templater, please read the Templater Changelog.

Templater 3.4: New Features & Improvements

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

Feature: 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. Developer users can even create their own rigging utilities and optionally share these with the Templater user community.

Feature: 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.

Enhancement: 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.

UI Enhancement: Reorganized Settings in Templater Preferences Dialog

The 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 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 Event: Footage Processing

The new footage processing event can be used in shell scripts, ExtendScripts, and the 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 Names

With introduction of Dynamic Subtitles, there are three new reserved column names:

srt-data srt-bg srt-display

New Bot Property Keys

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()

Fixed Issues

These issues have been fixed in Templater 3.4:

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 project. This happened if a composition contained both:

  • Layers that could not have effects applied, such as Camera or Light layers, AND
  • A set of layers assigned to a Templater layer group.

Now, users can have any type of layer within a composition that also has a set of layers assigned to a Templater layout group.

As of After Effects 24.3, the confirmation dialog for emptying the disk cache can no longer be bypassed for automation using the Templater advanced preference Purge all memory caches after each job. Therefore, this preference no longer empties the disk cache after each processed job. It does clear out all RAM, image, and undo caches. Users who enable disk caching and the Templater Bot on the same machine must manually clear the disk cache after every job. We strongly recommend that users of AE 24.3 and any version of Templater Bot should optimize the AE disk cache to minimize disruption to their automated workflows.

Templater 3.3.3 Update

A 3.3.3 update is now available for Templater 3.3. This update fixed a remote footage download issue when After Effects is installed on a non-system drive on Windows.

Templater 3.3.2 Update

A 3.3.2 update is now available for Templater 3.3. This update provides a critical fix for an issue that prevented satellites running the Templater Bot from accessing QUE jobs once 24 hours passed after the user signed in. The fix ensures that the Bot always uses its QUE satellite token for API communication.

Templater 3.3.1 Update

A 3.3.1 update is now available for Templater 3.3. This update offers improvements in using remote footage URLs.

Improvement: Support for Remote Footage URLs Without File Extensions

Templater now supports links to remote footage that do not include a file extension. Previously, Templater tried to parse the name and file type from the URL. This sometimes resulted in incorrect file naming. Now, Templater creates an entirely new, random file name and then adds a file extension based on its MIME type. MIME types are two-part identifiers for binary files transmitted online. Supported file types can vary depending on factors like operating system.

You may continue to use direct download links that include file extensions if you prefer. In fact, that's still the best practice recommended by Dataclay. If Templater is unable to determine the MIME type, having the file extension in the URL provides a fallback method for determining its type. The new workflow offers benefits when the remote footage location relies on links that are not direct downloads.

In these cases, Templater can accurately identify the file type and more easily import it to Adobe After Effects. The approach also further improves handling URLs with parameters, a feature introduced in 3.3.

Improvement: Support for Share Links for Remote Footage

Templater now supports share links from sources such as Google Drive or Dropbox, which don't include file names or extensions. This improvement is made possible by the new workflow described earlier. Google Drive links can be either public or private. For private Google Drive links, the file assets must be accessible to the Google account you use to authenticate to Templater.

New Features & Improvements in Templater 3.3

Templater 3.3 offers several new features, user interface (UI) refinements and improvements to logging and the user interface. It also includes multiple fixed issues.

  • New Feature: Horizontal Grouping

    As requested by many customers, Templater 3.3 lets you group elements horizontally as well as vertically. You can use horizontal grouping for nested elements, too.

  • New Feature: Ability to Use Templater with an Empty Data Source

    Have you ever wished you could start work on a project in Templater even if there is no data yet in the linked data source? Now you can. For example, you may still be deciding what elements to include as dynamic content. It also could support use of Templater for layout or time-sculpting only. Templater will display a message reminding you the data source is empty, just in case.

  • New Feature: Support for Parameters in Footage URLs

    If you're using footage from online services or storage locations, you may find the URLs include parameters before the file extension. Templater now allows you to use these URLs to specify locations for footage elements in your compositions. Parameters in a URL typically appear after a question mark or other special character and supply additional metadata related to the URL. In the following example, the base URL is followed by parameters that specify the height of an image.

    http://imagelib.dataclay.io/images/?height=220&img=USC90CHT279A021001.png

    This feature makes it easier and robust to add remote footage to your dynamic comps.

  • Improvement: Use of Markers in Spot Checking

    Spot checking, introduced in Templater 3.0.0, automates the production of still images from your compositions. You can then review these stills as a quality assurance check for your merged data.

    Templater now supports two methods of using markers to designate the points where a spot check image is generated. You can assign each marker a label that's meaningful to you. Alternatively, Templater now allows unlabeled markers. In this case, Templater names each generated image as SPOTCHECK_1, SPOTCHECK_2, and so on. The more markers you have, the less helpful this naming convention is.

    Which is better: labeled or unlabeled? We strongly recommend that you always use labeled markers. This makes spot checking easier and quicker for you to use. When collaborating on a dynamic composition, it helps others to clearly understand the content of each spot check image.

    NOTE  You cannot use a combination of labeled and unlabeled markers, or spot checking may fail.

    If you don't want to set your own markers, you can configure Templater to sample a specific number of frames in your composition and then review these images. Templater evenly distributes these across the entirety of your composition. Therefore, the content of each image may or may not give you useful data. Spot checking means you always get the frames that you want to see.

  • Improvement: Centralized Logging

    Templater now logs activities even when no specific project is open. These activities might include sign-ins, linking to data sources, and so on. A new button in Templater's Preferences dialog allows you to quickly and easily find saved logs when you need to provide them to our Support personnel. This button is located next to the Set Log Location field. Clicking the button opens the log location in either the macOS Finder or in Windows Explorer.

  • UI Enhancement: Job Selection Setup Dialog

    Several enhancements to this dialog make the options clearer and easier to use. The name of the first section has been changed from Batch Job Query to Filter Query. Also, the Sort By and Sort Order fields have been grouped together in a new Sorting section.

  • Fixed Issues

    These issues have been fixed in Templater 3.3:

    For compositions at certain frame rates, the spot checking feature produced duplicate images for each marker.

    Templater was incorrectly applying a range validation check meant for Google Sheets to compositions where the data source was QUE.

    Templater did not retrieve additional pages when the command line interface was used and the additional_pages option was specified.

    The end user license agreement (EULA) was updated to reflect a change of mailing address for Dataclay, LLC. The updates were made in both the macOS and Windows versions.