CC 2014 Editable text from AE templates

[Touko Maksimainen]

That only works if you have a known default value to test against, which is unfortunately not the case here.

[Walter Soyka]

[Touko Maksimainen] “That only works if you have a known default value to test against, which is unfortunately not the case here.”

You could build it so you could. The default value is set with the text tool on the text layer in the Ae template. You’d literally click into the text layer and type ‘default’.

The expression you apply to that text layer in Ae which makes the variable text appear is applied “on top of” the contents of text.sourceText without actually altering text.sourceText, so you can still test for a fixed default value:

if (text.sourceText == 'default') "Programmatic Text" else text.sourceText

When you change the text in Premiere, it passes new text.sourceText back to Ae. With the little snippet above, if the live text in Premiere says ‘default’ the render will show ‘Programmatic Text’. If in Premiere, you over write ‘default’ with say ‘banana’ then ‘banana’ will appear in the render. Change ‘banana’ back to ‘default’ and ‘Programmatic Text’ will re-appear.

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

[Touko Maksimainen]

That is indeed how it works. However, I have here a master comp where user inputs data. The data is then distributed over a series of other comps via expressions. So by design the sourceText parameters of the slave comps are never used. The only way I can see getting around this is to rewrite the whole thing using not expressions, but scripting instead.

[Walter Soyka]

[Touko Maksimainen] “So by design the sourceText parameters of the slave comps are never used. The only way I can see getting around this is to rewrite the whole thing using not expressions, but scripting instead.”

You could use the invisible text layer technique I demoed above to provide the Premiere editor with local “override” layers. Test to see if they are non-blank and use them when a value is present, otherwise, use your existing logic.

Or do I persist in my misunderstanding of your setup?

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

[Touko Maksimainen]

Actually, that is indeed viable, thanks!