Jenkmeister

Question

Feeback Requested: Project Panel Sort Order Change

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
March 13, 2023
5 replies
3258 views

For a very long time now, After Effects has used a sort order in the Project Panel that hasn't always sorted files containing numbers in an expected way. We are making a change today, starting with the AE Beta 23.4x18 release, that switches the sort order to a more expected case insensitive sort order that will work better for names containing numbers.

Please give it a go and let us know if this is better for you or if you prefer the previous sorting method.

Feature request

This topic has been closed for replies.

Shebbe

Community Expert

Hello,

I noticed with the recent update that the new sorting order prioritizes numbers over "_" underscore symbol now. This is very frustrating for our team since we've always been using _ for folders we'd like to keep on top. Is there any reason to have this lower in rank with the new sorting method? I hope this gets switched back tbh. We'd need to resort to something else otherwise like 00_ which doesn't look nice and doesn't type fast.

JohnColombo17100380

Community Manager

Hi @Shebbe,

I definitely feel the pain here; I also have used underscores for a long while to pin items to the top of my AE projects. I think School of Motion used to recommend this? While I will bring this feedback to the team, the old sorting order was less desirable/predictable in a lot of situations. The new order is much more ASCII compliant (though perhaps not fully) and the sort is more like what you'd see in most other applications.

Here is a rough chart of how ASCII sort prioritizes different characters. I've found that an asterisk—which sorts before all alphanumeric characters—is a good drop-in replacement for an underscore since it is also typed with the right hand on most keyboards.

To help with the transition to the new sorting method, here is a quick script that will replace any leading underscores in the whole project with an asterisk (or any character of your choice if you change the "replacementCharacter" string variable on the second line. As with anything that performs a batch action, be sure to back up your project first. The action is also undoable.

(function replaceLeadingUnderscoresInProjectItemNames() {
  var replacementCharacter = "*";

  function replaceLeadingUnderscores(theCollection) {
    for (var i = 1; i <= theCollection.items.length; i++) {
      var theProjItem = theCollection.item(i);

      theProjItem.name = theProjItem.name.replace(/^_/, replacementCharacter);

      if (theProjItem instanceof FolderItem) {
        replaceLeadingUnderscores(theProjItem);
      }
    }
  }

  app.beginUndoGroup([
    "Replace Leading '_' with '",
      replacementCharacter,
      "' in Project Item Names",
  ].join(""));

  replaceLeadingUnderscores(app.project);

  app.endUndoGroup();
})();

Cheers,

- John

E

Enkhsaikhan

Participant

please it broke all project workflow, our studio has strict file naming system my workflow, before i had to select all comp and export to render, now i have to pick them manually one by one. I have to export at least 100 scenes in one day, please can you make as an legacy name sorting option in preference?

example:

PL_201_SQ01_SC001.mov - is an animation file

PL_201_SQ01_SC001-001.psd - is a background file named into PL_201_SQ01_SC001-001, and we make multiple versions of background files like PL_201_SQ01_SC001-002, PL_201_SQ01_SC001-003 etc.

and these are composited into "PL_201_SQ01_SC001" name

Now it's all mixed up, and very tedious to pick them manually, please reply! We had this filenaming in our pipeline for almost 3 years now, now it's broken

I

iaa1

Known Participant

This change goes deeper than that – you also moved special characters after numbers, for no reason above. This breaks my template organization.
Sorting is a basic way to keep data organized. As long as the sort rules are fully documented do as you like. You do a disservice by asking every user to experiment to see how it works.
By fully documented i mean .... where does each type of character fall in the order? UC before or after LC or ignored? Numbers sorted rationally (140 before 1300) or irrationally (by digit), sort each field (separated bu ".") separately? And so on.

T

tristansummers

Inspiring

140 will go before 1300 if you use correct padding though (0140 or maybe 00140 and 01300 to be safe). Not that the people supplying assets will ever understand that. And anyone how gives me a file with a"." that isn't followed by a file extension needs a Paddington lomg hard stare

I

iaa1

Known Participant

i use padding always

It appears that they are now using Unicode standard order. But i'm not entirely certain.
Film industry convention is that frame numbers should be preceeded by "." not by "_".

T

tristansummers

Inspiring

Until I can turn of automatic number incrementing completely it really makes no odds to me. If you have a number at the end of a name something will go tragically wrong at some point either way.

J

jenkmeister17177426

Author

Jenkmeister

Got any examples of that so we can investigate?

btw, I just tried duplicating a solid 300+ times with the updated code, the increments are working as expected for me.

T

tristansummers

Inspiring

It is a seperate issue and I don't think anyone is going to change it. I just don't want any incrementing at all unless it adds COPY to the original filename. If you have item_01, item_02, item_03 and you duplicate item_02 it becomes item_04 so I have no idea it is actually a version of item_02. Doesn't sound like an issue, unless you use version numbers and dates and sequential asset ordering and you don't import things all at the same time. If I import an asset called frame_222035 often AE will increment it's number so I can no longer find it at all. I have tried a lot of workarounds but I guess it just made the scripts and expressions easier for the coding to do it that way rather than Copy_01 like evrey other item duplication system in the world.

If you are rigging and you have limb01, limb02 etc, those number are important.