After Effects Project Downgrader

[Walter Soyka]

Sorry, Darren, I’m not aware of any tool that does this for Ae. The AEP project file format is very different than the PRPROJ file format, and I don’t think there’s a clean way to do what the downgrader does.

If you have a one-off AEP that you need saved down a version or two, I’d be happy to help out.

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

[Mark Whitney]

That’s a slick Premiere site that I never new existed.

You might be interested in this:
On aescripts:

https://aescripts.com/pt_opensesame/

It’s sole purpose is to exchange AE projects between versions & OS’s.

The trial version allows full export; to import requires the license. But, what it exports is a simple, csv text file that you can subsequently open & at least see if has your asset paths, etc. Pretty sure it’ll do what your wishing though.

[Darren Lee]

Thanks Walter, I eventually installed a VirtualBox of Sierra to open it, which was not ideal

[Darren Lee]

This is interesting, I don’t think I’d pay the $70 though. Shame they don’t allow importing in the trial.

Much appreciated.

[Walter Soyka]

pt_OpenSesame was THE way to handle downsaves before Ae added the feature natively (sometime around CS6 IIRC). It’s also still a great way to make all kinds of project changes with a spreadsheet.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it would help too much here, as you’d still have to have the newer version in order to open the original AEP.

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

[Mark Whitney]

[Walter Soyka] ”
Unfortunately, I don’t think it would help too much here, as you’d still have to have the newer version in order to open the original AEP.”

Ya, that’s always the catch. Couldn’t quite tell from the original post if that was the case or not.

[Alicia Medina]

I write this in case it works for someone else:
now that you can open the project with the VirtualBox installed, you can save it as seen in the attached screenshot and you could go back to your “normal” version, (without the VirtualBox) and open the project.

[Michael Szalapski]

This is why I keep a machine with old versions installed on it – just in case I need to walk a project back for some reason or other.

Although, I don’t really know why I would need to do that anymore…

[Liam Cockcroft]

Hi Darren, you can save a project for previous versions by opening that project in its current version and saving as… see screenshot.