Scripting Layer Color

[Ralph Moreau]

I’ve looked all throughout the documentation, and google searches. Is there a way to script changing color of layers. I’m building a script that parents a null to another layer, then depending on that layers color, the null will be a specified color. Not looking for labels either, but color of an actual layer.

[Dan Ebberts]

The only thing I can think of would be to do a replaceWithSolid() on the null’s source and specify the color you want, like this:

var myNull = app.project.activeItem.layer(1);
var myFootage = myNull.source;
myFootage.replaceWithSolid([1,0,0],myFootage.name,myFootage.width,myFootage.height,myFootage.pixelAspect);

[Ralph Moreau]

Hi Dan,

Thank you! This is a very clever solution to changing the the color of the icon on the null layer. Which would be an amazing alternative. But if possible is there a way to actually change color of the layers themselves on the timeline?

[Dan Ebberts]

I think you do have to go after the color of the solidsource for the null (rather than the color of the layer itself), but it’s not as tricky as I thought. This should work:

var myNull = app.project.activeItem.layer(1);
myNull.source.mainSource.color = [1,1,0];

[Filip Vandueren]

I think what you need is to change the color of the layer in the timeline is to just set the label:

app.project.activeItem.layer(index).label = 8; // takes an integer from 0-16 - 0=no label

You can choose one of the preset color-labels as setup in your preferences, but you cannot change those presets via scripting.

[Ralph Moreau]

Thank you both for your brilliant solutions, this definitely places me at the end of the creating the script. For some reason I thought the label method, only applied to layer markers. Both these methods make it a lot more efficient in creating color hierarchies.