Source text as thisComp.name but also have it lowercase

[Dan Ebberts]

>What can expression can I add to this so that I am able to have the text within the comp all lowercase regardless of the case of the comp

Like this maybe:

compName = thisComp.name.toLowerCase();

> is there anyway I can add text to the end of my comp’s name without it appearing in the text?

You could maybe preface the info with a character that would never appear in the artist or title text, like “~”:

~16:9

and then change the second expression to something like this:

compName = thisComp.name.toLowerCase();
compName.substring(compName.indexOf(‘//’)+2,compName.indexOf(‘~’) )

Dan

[Johnny Opamo]

Hey Dan,

Thanks for this. I think it’s close. I’ve tried the expression you wrote for lowercase before and after the expression I already have. Before it ignores it, after it adds everything in lowercase but then also adds in the title text for example everything after “// title” which I’d like the artist text to ignore.

The second expression for the title text with the lowercase and ignoring a specific phrase works perfectly. Thanks for your help so far!

[Johnny Opamo]

Actually I’ve just tried that first expression but sandwiched it in the line between the original expression so it now works. Thanks Dan!!

[Johnny Opamo]

Hey Dan,

Just to follow on from this. Everything’s working well but there are artist names for example that are too long. I’m able to scale them down to fit the comp but what I’m really looking for now is a line break so I can keep the source text linked with the comp name but also be able to have the artist name on two separate lines.

Is there any way to do this?

As a reminder

artist text expression is:

compName = thisComp.name
compName = thisComp.name.toLowerCase();
compName.substring(0, compName.indexOf(‘//’))

title text expression is:

compName = thisComp.name
compName.substring(compName.indexOf(‘//’)+2)
compName = thisComp.name.toLowerCase();
compName.substring(compName.indexOf(‘//’)+2,compName.indexOf(‘–‘) )

Thanks in advance

[Dan Ebberts]

As a simple example, if you wanted to split long names at the first space character, you could do something like this:

maxLength = 20;
compName = thisComp.name;
compName = thisComp.name.toLowerCase();
n = compName.substring(0, compName.indexOf(‘//’));
n.length > maxLength ? n.replace(” “, “\r”) : n

Dan

[Louise Nylund]

Hi! I’m rather new to expressions. Is there a way to use this method but have the comp name be divided into three rather than two separate strings, in order to get three layers of text resulting from the comp name? I have lower thirds with three text lines (name, job title, company) that I would like to automate by populating each of the layers’ source text with parts of the comp name. The formatting differs between the text layers so I think it would be trickier to have all the lines in one paragraph, right?

I don’t need to worry about the lowercase part, just want the three text layers to take their source text from the comp name.

[Dan Ebberts]

Sure. If you use a separator character that’s unlikely to occur otherwise in the text (say, the pipe (|) character, then you could use expressions like this:

thisComp.name.split("|")[0]; // name
thisComp.name.split("|")[1];  // job title
thisComp.name.split("|")[2]; // company