[Ben Jordan]

Cool, using the err catch works well. Thank you! …Learning how expressions work compared to PHP & AHK. 🙂

I’m still pulling in the text source though, since the source has some larger expressions it’s pulling in to adjust things. But now I can adjust each seq ‘locally’ by dropping in certain layers (I have a dozen or so of these for different things) or globally by removing them. Here’s what I changed it to:

try{
expr = thisComp.layer("SCALE").text.sourceText.toString();
}catch(err){
expr = comp("MASTER CHIEF").layer("SCALE").text.sourceText.toString();
}

eval(expr)

[Ben Jordan]

Not likely it’s being blocked, but who knows. I’ve not had any trouble with Norton, NOD32 or Malwarebytes blocking any of our other scripts at work, and I regularly write them for clients w/o any problems like that.

You could try compiling it into an .exe — just right-click the .ahk file, and chose Compile Script, and it will create an .exe of it with same name in the same folder. Other than this, I don’t have any other things to try at the moment.

Perhaps I’ll try rewriting it using another method… maybe we can get something that works more consistently for more people.

[Ben Jordan]

Thanks for your reply. It’s actually just showing me the name I gave it (in parenthesis). Below you can see I’ve named it “1” and the dropdown is showing me which comps & layers in those comps (normal behavior), and the name that it is using in those comps (It’s showing “1” on each because I have not re-named it in those comps).

I am trying to figure out which layer name it is in the Illustrator file, which has tons of layers. This happened also on a co-workers project, so I was hoping to figure out a way to retrieve that original imported name.

(You can see some of the other original names in the project area below the highlighted file. The one I accidentally renamed originally had a similar name, ##/NA map layers named.ai)

I exported as an XMP in hopes it saved the original name in there, but it did not (at least not in human readable form!).

[Ben Jordan]

After hitting Command+5, try hitting Command+F. I’m on PC, but Ctrl+5, Ctrl+F works on PC.

[Ben Jordan]

Perhaps try changing the “Sendmode Play” line to “Sendmode Input” instead and see if that does it.

Just to be clear, you’re holding down your mouse button, then holding Tab, then releasing mouse button, then scrubbing, correct?

[Ben Jordan]

If you’re on a PC, you can use a little AutoHotKey script I wrote to give live previews in locked views:

#MaxHotkeysPerInterval 100
SetTitleMatchMode 2
SendMode Play

#IfWinActive Adobe After Effects ; while AE is in foreground
$Tab::
while GetKeyState("Tab", "P") ; While the Tab key is being held down
{
Send {Click Up} ; release left mouse button
sleep 1 ; wait 1ms
Send {Click Down} ; click left mouse button
}
Send {Click Up} ; make sure mouse releases when Tab is released
return

Save that as any .ahk file (ae_locked_view_scrubber.ahk, etc), or you can download it from a link I saved here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/umbh7vm9rd4evvq/ae_locked_view_scrubber.ahk

Then install AutoHotKey (https://www.autohotkey.com/), and just double-click the .ahk file. (When running it should put a little “H” icon in your tray… to close it right-click that H and choose Exit.)

Now, when you want to see the scrubbing in a locked view, hold down Tab while scrubbing, then release your mouse button, and as long as Tab is held down, it’ll be “flashing” your mouse button every 1ms, thus faking you tapping the button really fast, THUS allowing you to see the scrubbing in the locked view. 🙂

Let me know if this works for you. It works great here on Win 7 Pro 64-bit. If you’re on Mac, perhaps there is a hotkey/scripting program where you could do something similar. It’s too bad AE doesn’t let you scrub those locked views by default!