So weird. I just tried that again and it didn’t work. I did, however, make it work using a slightly hacky workaround, going from further back up the tree:

</p><p>cg = shp.property("Contents").property("CurveGrp").property("Contents");<br> cg.property("Path 1").property("Path").expression =…

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Thanks Dan. That doesn’t work though sadly, neither does curv.property("Path 1").expression =...

The hierarchy on the layer is Contents > CurveGrp > Path 1 > Path, if that helps.

I should clarify – this is an AE script rather than an expression.

I can’t work out the right object name for a path I’ve created, which I need to add an expression to. Here’s the code I’ve got:

</p><p> function createShape(targetComp) {</p><p> return targetComp.layers.addShape();</p><p> }</p><p> function createShapeGroup(shape) {</p><p> return shape.property("Contents").addProperty("ADBE…

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You sir are a genius – this is the correct answer. Thank you so much!

Ah, sorry Dan! I didn’t include all the code; addSlider() and addCheckbox() are defined elsewhere –

<br>function addSlider(targetLayer, sliderName, defaultValue) {<br>var slz = targetLayer.property("Effects").addProperty("ADBE Slider Control");<br>slz.name = sliderName;<br>slz("Slider").setValue(defaultValue);<br>return…

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I’m trying to create a script, using the Create paths from nulls example as a starting point. The function called when the button is clicked is below – it should create four nulls, but only creates one. I tried removing the loop and putting in four separate code blocks to manually create the nulls one after another, but that didn’t work…

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Haven’t used PPro for a couple of weeks. Went back into a project to re-export something, and the export function had stopped working: Ctrl+M, File > Export > Media or going to the Export tab all just gave a grey screen with the spinner which sat there doing nothing.

I tried opening up a couple of other projects which were working fine, and…

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Amazing – thanks Dan!

I’m being obtuse here – this should work surely?

The setup: I have Null 1 to Null 11 at indices 1-11. I want to use their positions to create a mask on some footage. Here’s the code I’m using on the mask path property:

let p = [];
for (i = 1; i <=11; i++) {
    p[i] = thisComp.layer(i).position;
}
createPath(p, [], [], true)

I get the error “argument 1…

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Thanks Juliette. It’s not quite the way I want to do it (I need backup copies of all the timelines, including in their preview-clipped state), and in any case it doesn’t work. I can’t select multiple clips and then replace them as the Replace Footage option is greyed out with more than one selected. Offlining a load of clips and then relinking to…

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So…. I guess the next question is (if this is even possible in ExtendScript): would a panel that did something like this be useful to anyone?

Is there a way to force-replace (or update) all footage in a sequence with other footage in a project, based on text patterns in the name?

A specific example: I’m currently creating lots of videos with stock. Initially we use temps as a lot of it gets thrown out, swapped, etc. Then the time comes to buy all the clips we’ve used. I’ve created a…

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Thanks Yoan, I’ll check that out.

I eventually solved this by calculating the height of each line of text with its .leading property, rather than using sourceRectAtTime. Still can’t work out why sourceRect was throwing everything off.

I’m creating a mogrt which is essentially a jazzed up box with some text on it. Somehow this behemoth now has over 40 controls on it for things like where the box is, how long the text stays on screen etc. One of the controls gives the size of the main text body (which can have up to 8 lines), and I just need it to give the maximum size of that…

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Ahhhh excellent, hadn’t seen that. Thank you!

I don’t know what’s happened, but for some reason all expressions in AE are showing up in Arial. How can I change the font back to a more code-friendly one??

Had to do it manually for the deadline – only just come back and had the time to play around with it. Yes, that fixes it. I was thinking the inPoint was enough, but I realise the layer was offset in time (I’d moved it forward in the timeline, then pulled the start of the layer back to 0, so the startTime was >0). Thanks again!

Thanks so much Dan. That did change how the backing (not the text) behaves, although it didn’t fix things… here’s how the layers are set up, with the titles up top, the text layer and shape layer backing in the middle, and all the layers (stock) going off the screen at the bottom. Changing to …

if ((m.inPoint <= time) && (n.inPoint >=…

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Thanks Dan. Not in front of it now so I can’t check – but it’s weird the text is doing what I’d expect, while the backing layer which is getting the text layer’s dimensions isn’t!

Bashing my head against the desk a bit with this one… I have a series of title cards representing categories, named like “TITLE1”, “TITLE2”, etc. Each is 5 seconds long, and between each one is a series of clips. The title cards are between layer 16 and 20, in order – the clips are from about 25 onwards.

I want to have a text layer whose…

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don’t worry, this works:

function createPath(group) {

return group.property(“Contents”).addProperty(“ADBE Vector Shape – Group”);

}

thanks for your help!

If I change createPath to this, it works. So what’s the difference between a parametric path and a freeform one, in terms of how AE references them?

function createPath(group) {

return group.property(“Contents”).addProperty(“ADBE Vector Shape – Star”);

}

Thanks Filip. So that’s an extra step after adding the ADBE Vector Group?

Would this work for the createPath function:

group.property(“Contents”).addProperty(“ADBE Vector Shape – Group”);

return group.property(“Contents”).addProperty(“ADBE Vector Shape”);

…or does the ADBE Vector Shape have to sit within the ADBE Vector Shape – Group?

I’m trying to make a script that creates a shape layer, then a group, then a (freeform) path, stroke and fill within that. This is what I’ve got – the createPath function doesn’t work, and causes AE to white-out and crash. Any ideas why?

The script works fine if I comment that line out.

var shp = createShape(comp);

shp.name = ("Curve");

var curvgrp =…

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Press Ctrl+K which will open up the composition settings window. You can now set the duration of the comp to something that’s long enough to fit in the entire clip.

Here’s an alternative way that may be simpler:

1) Create your master layer that you’ll put your scale / position keyframes onto

2) Make your text layer(s) and parent them to the master layer

3) Alt/Option-click each text layer’s scale property to add this expression:

s = thisLayer.parent.scale[0]/100;
scale / s

This will keep the text layer’s scale at…

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