[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Hi Yoan, thanks for the link. I’ve been playing with it a bit cos I teach it in my After Effects course – just uploaded this sample – https://youtu.be/EjNxHIqJ5kU

But those few I mentioned don’t seem to be doing anything when I try to them out. Do you know if the video you shared cover those Expression methods I mentioned?

Cheers

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Ooops! Sorry but I made an error – the earlier scale calculated for a fit-to-width solution.

This one leaves TransformFX.scale at 100 if the text length/width doesn’t breach the margin.

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

You’re committing recursive calculations – sorta like chasing after your own tail.

sourceRectAtTime() doesn’t calculate transform.scale but since you needed it, you thought it was a good idea to calculate for scale but as you scale down to hit the target, you also scale the source.

So, it’s like shooting at a moving target that will always be behind you. 😀

The trick is to use the Transform Effect to do the scaling.

I did a screengrab of the solution. FWIW, you can drop this into Claude and ask it to use OCR to convert it into text.

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

If you can post your code snippets …

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

All sorted out! I suck!!! LOL

Seems like my earlier process was the issue A N D I’m still wondering what it was but it’s working now and I didn’t need any code to deal specifically with Essential Properties’ Expressions.

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Managed to get the app.preference thingy doing its thing –

https://ae-scripting.docsforadobe.dev/other/preferences.html#preferences

But the Essential Properties Expressions – setting them to their original state is still a challenge. By original I mean the state they’re in when they get nested, so that they don’t evaluate in the child comp which will throw an error since thisLayer.name etc are not the same after nesting.

ae-scripting.docsforadobe.dev

Preferences object — After Effects Scripting Guide 22.3.0 documentation

Preferences object — After Effects Scripting Guide 22.3.0 documentation

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Hi Andy, thanks for sharing your progress. It looks like you’ve reaching your goals. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you automate the process. I suggest you complete the task and then sit back and take a huge sigh of relief. Then, look at the process and where you can proceed either more quickly or in an automated manner.

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Hi Andy, see if this helps – https://aescripts.com/universal-audio/

As I mentioned earlier, it’s best to solve the issue at its cause and this may help you keep audio the Render and preComps in sync. There’s a Trial Version. HTH

aescripts.com

Universal Audio

Now with KBar support and over 10 new features! Timing animations to VO or music? Make audio flow through all your comps with one button, always giving you audio reference along with markers to animate to, no matter where you … Continue reading

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

This looks really haphazard. I suggest you do this manually cos there doesn’t seem to be a quick fix. I would also look at the possibility of bringing the layers in the nested comp into the render comp. Another option is to drop specific audio parts into their respective comps. Then, use Markers to demarcate Start/End and other important parts.

I don’t see how or why you think Expressions will work with this in an efficient manner. My thoughts are there will be different time adjustments for different parts of the timeline. So, just go heads down this time around and for future work on similar projects, look at a more efficient comp hierarchy because it sounds like the cause for your issue is with mistimed nested comps/layers and their audio.

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

And you can select all KFs and nudge them or if you select ONE KF, you can right-click and choose one of Select Previous KFs or Select Following KFs.