• Adobe After Effects

  Finding unused files on the hard drive.

  Posted by Jeff Herring on June 12, 2019 at 8:41 pm

  I need to edit a project that has about 200 photos flying around on a giant photo wall. The AE project has 200 photos in a photo bin within the project bein. It only has the 200 photos that have already been used. The source folder (on the hard drive) has 350 files in it now. Is there a way to tell which photos on the hard drive have been used and which ones are left unused? If I try and drag in all of the photos AE will just import them all creating duplicates. I just want to import the 150 that haven’t been used.

  Thanks, Jeff

  Jeff Herring replied 6 years, 11 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Tomas Bumbulevičius

  June 13, 2019 at 9:56 am

  I guess what Dave wrote is unlikely to happen. Anyways, do you have a specific order of initial 200 photos selection, or it was some ‘random’ selection from here and there?

  To my knowledge, there isn’t such build-in way to import unique files only. The best way I can think of is write a short script which would compare bins items during import and decide to import them or not.

  Find out more:
  After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
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• 

  Mark Whitney

  June 13, 2019 at 4:03 pm

  Wouldn’t simply using the Collect Files under the File menu tab do the trick? The entire project & material ends up in one folder. Then simply do a comparison of the two folders.
• 

  Walter Soyka

  June 13, 2019 at 8:18 pm

  [Jeff Herring] “Is there a way to tell which photos on the hard drive have been used and which ones are left unused? If I try and drag in all of the photos AE will just import them all creating duplicates. I just want to import the 150 that haven’t been used. “

  Drag them all in and let Ae create duplicate entries in the project panel, then use “File > Dependencies > Consolidate All Footage” to automatically remove the duplicates.

  Walter Soyka
  Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
  @keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]
• 

  Jeff Herring

  June 13, 2019 at 9:38 pm

  Thanks, Walter,
  That did exactly what I needed. Pulled in all of the photos in one massive import and then it quickly weeded out the duplicates.

  Thanks for the help guys I appreciate it.

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