Add customizable tokens/properties to Render Queue
It would be extremely helpful to be able to define our own render tokens somehow. We often have very long and complex filenames that string together common elements like "Project Code," "Client Name," "Project Name," "Deliverable Name," "First/Last Initials," "Version Number", "Language"
It would be helpful to be able to define these somewhere in the AE project, perhaps as metadata, and then allow them to be used as render tokens/properties that can be used in the existing File Name and Location Templates.
Sure, we can manually enter this information ourselves when we go to render. We could also rename our comps this way (though comp readability would become terrible). But it becomes a chore when we have dozens or hundreds of files to render. It would help with quality-of-life and ease-of-use to be able to set up these tokens once per project and reuse them. Filenames and render folder locations would be much more consistent (even when sharing the project with multiple artists on different teams) and would require less constant fiddling to make sure we're putting things in the right place.
Being able to set a "Project Root Folder" for example would also address these other issues, where we want to render to specific folders in a folder structure and we don't want to worry about where in that structure the AE project itself lives:
https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911311-after-effects/suggestions/37543408-a-render-settings-token-that-allows-you-to-climb-u
https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911311-after-effects/suggestions/41679958-render-queue-remember-projectname-token-on-exp
Being able to set a "Version Number" would also address this issue:
https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911311-after-effects/suggestions/41125603-add-project-version-number-as-a-render-token-prope
Soren Laulainen
shared this idea
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Soren Laulainen
commented
Yeah, we're using that right now for setting our render filenames. But any text strings we enter into the template here often have to be renamed when we create a new version or start a new project, which sort of defeats the purpose. Best we can do is create presets for each project, but that can quickly get cluttered. This request is to be able to add our own custom properties to the list of available properties so we can avoid hardcoding text strings into the Custom template. Then the presets can be more about which properties are going into the filename (and in what order), instead of defining what those properties are.
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Warren Heaton
commented
I may be missing something here, but go to Output To > Custom in the Render Queue and add whatever text strings you need for future use.
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Antoine (Autokroma.com)
commented
Because the filename has to be valid somehow. So I can't use / inside it to specify the filename or a subfolder of what you're looking for
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Antoine (Autokroma.com)
commented
Not sure I understand everything :-(
But what I could do in AfterCodecs is have a little scripting language for the filename and instead of entering your filename in the AE window you could change the comment of the current AE render queue item (on the right, it's grey but if you click it you can edit it !)
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Brian Carter
commented
Situation: I have parallel folder structures.
CLIENT/PROJECTS/ProjectName/project.aep
and
CLIENT/RENDERS/ProjectName/RendersDate
"Renders" is dropbox shared with the client so they can just watch for new files.I can write a template that chains together "../" tokens to climb up the hierarchy from the project folder and then down the Renders hierarchy, but it's brittle because if I subfolder my AEP, there is a mismatch and then a bunch of folders get spawned.
I'd love a token that's like "..../CLIENTNAME" so I can say "climb up this hierarchy UNTIL THIS PARTICULAR FOLDER and then down.
(Yes I'd need different render templates per client, but that's okay)