New Compositions from sources with numbers in their name

[Hector Vera]

This one is tricky, after searching a YouTube video of someone giving a tutorial on right clicking the project tab on After Effect, selecting “New Composition” for example, this guy already had Comp 1 and Comp 2 created, after clicking “New Composition”, the default name would be Comp 3 immediately so you will have to rename it by the correct number it was perserved to if you want it to perserve the original name but of course if you already had a composition named that, it will not work. Try starting over and pass in each compositions in the order it should be when no other compositions has that same name yet and see if it helps. Not sure if it helps but like I said, its tricky and seems to be no way around to perserve it besides not having a composition of the same name there. Hope you are able to get around this soon and best of luck!

[Walter Soyka]

I can’t remember when Ae didn’t work like this, but you don’t normally run into this because of another special case — when you create a comp from a file, Ae drops the dot and file extension in the newly-created comp name. Maybe you’re seeing this if the assets are named such that they don’t have file extensions?

Anyway, here’s a quick script that will rename the selected comps in your project panel, based on the name of the first layer in each. It will also optionally strip a file extension (a dot and any number of alphabetical characters at the end of the name only).

app.beginUndoGroup("Rename selected comps with first layer name");
var stripDotExtension = true;
var projectSelection = app.project.selection;
var processedCompsCount = 0;
for (var i in projectSelection) {
    if (projectSelection[i] instanceof CompItem) {
        projectSelection[i].name = projectSelection[i].layer(1).name;
        if (stripDotExtension) {
            projectSelection[i].name = projectSelection[i].name.replace(/(\.[a-zA-Z]*$)/, "");
        }
        processedCompsCount++;
    }
}
writeLn("Processed " + processedCompsCount  + " comp" + (processedCompsCount != 1 ? "s" : "") + ".");
app.endUndoGroup();

[Greg Hirsh]

Wow!! Thank you so, so much, @Walter Soyka ! This script works, solves the problem, and will literally save me HOURS!!!. I can not thank you enough. Very, very much appreciated.

[Greg Hirsh]

Thank you so much for taking the time to look in to this, @Hector Vera ! Unfortunately, (and this is what is so weird – and I think what is new behavior), After Effects not only looks at comps that have already been made when deciding what a new comp (with a similar name)’s new sequence number will be, it also now looks at the sequence numbers of the source files them selves. So, in other words, even if I start over and have not created any comps yet, when I make the very first comp of the project (using the example file names from my post at the top, SourceMovie_001, SourceMovie_002, SourceMovie_003, SourceMovie_004, and SourceMovie_005 – again these are the names of the files themselves, no comps exist yet) the first composition will be named SourceMovie_006 (it doesn’t matter which of the source files I used to create the comp, it just names it using the next number in the sequence because it’s taking the source file sequence numbers into account now).

Edit: I also realize now (if you see my post below) that there was a kind of user error involved on my part.

Thank you, again, for trying to help research this!

[Greg Hirsh]

Also, @Walter Soyka as a follow up, having gone back and looked at everything again); it turns out you’re right about what is causing this. There is a simple (and new to my workflow) combination of import options that I now realize are the cause of the difference. I’ve been bringing image sequences in and checking the “Force alphabetical order” button. This brings them in without appending the file extension and frame range to their name (which it would otherwise do if the button was left unchecked). In this scenario, it auto increments sequence numbers of new comps of the same naming scheme. If I don’t check the “”Force alphabetical order” button, comps created from the source files will preserve the original name and number (presumably because SourcMovie_001_[01001-010802].exr is a different string then SourceMovie_001). Alternatively if I check both the “Force alphabetical order” button (which I find to be good practice) and the “Create Composition” button (with the Import as Footage option in the following dialogue box) a composition with same name and number is created. This ALSO solves my problem. Either way, HOURS SAVED and I thank you!!!

[Brie Clayton]

Thanks for this solve, Walter!