Feature Focus: Media Replacement for MOGRTs and Essential Properties

[AnnikaKoenig]

Today we’d like to offer you early access to a much-requested feature for Motion Graphics templates and Essential Properties (formerly Master Properties) in After Effects: the ability to replace images or videos in your motion graphics. We are looking forward to your feedback! 

You can create multiple variations of a template with different media, enabling a wide array of new uses for MOGRTs, from news and social graphics to animated slideshows and customizable logo templates.

To get you started here a very simple MOGRT which contains a logo and a background to replace: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wib8o2d13pdd9ad/Miami%20Moon%20Intro.mogrt?dl=0

Important: Different than with other beta features, you will need to manually enable Media Replacement through the new Beta menu.

The reason behind this is that enabling this feature in Premiere Pro will cause Beta projects to be incompatible with the current shipping release. This is not the case for After Effects. If you want to try out Media Replacement in Premiere Pro but want to later make sure not all projects are incompatible, you can disable the feature after using it through the Beta menu. After restart new projects will be compatible with releases of Premiere Pro 2020 again.

To create a Motion Graphics template with replaceable media in After Effects:
1. Drag the layers you want to make replaceable to the Essential Graphics panel.

2. Export the template as a Motion Graphics Template.

Optional: To reduce the file size of your template, you can right-click on the thumbnail in the Essential Graphics panel and replace it with a thumbnail or placeholder.

Note: The Media Replacement feature will not work with MOGRTs that require Dynamic Link.

To use Media Replacement features in After Effects with Essential Properties: 
Note that this part of the feature is still in active development and may bake existing issues into the projects themselves. Project files may become invalid after bug fixes.
1. Drag the layer you want to make replaceable to the Essential Graphics panel.

2. Nest your composition inside another composition.
3. Twirl down to the media’s Essential Properties in the timeline.

 

3. Drag and drop another piece of media from the project panel – an image, video or comp – on top. The thumbnails will now show a blue outline and the media is replaced. 

 

2. Double-click on the media in the timeline to open a precomp to edit that instance of the media.

 

To use a Media Replacement MOGRT in Premiere Pro:
1. Use the Essential Graphics panel to choose the template and apply it to your timeline.
2. Select the template in the timeline and navigate to the media thumbnail in the Essential Graphics panel.

3. Drag your replacement media or sequence onto the thumbnail. For MOGRTs with multiple Media Replacement controls you can drag multiple clips at once.

4. Use additional controls underneath the thumbnail in the Essential Graphics panel to adjust position, scale and rotation and to add an time offset to your media (e.g. to start your video used in the MOGRT a few seconds later).

5. Swap the order of the media when there are multiple Media Replacement controls by dragging one thumbnail onto another.
6. To apply more complex custom edits to your replaced media (such as applying effects), open the embedded sequence by double-clicking on the thumbnail or by clicking on “Open in Timeline” in the menu of the Media Replacement control (Hamburger Menu). When there is no track item selected, the Program Monitor will show a widget for direct manipulation of Position, Scale and Rotation. This will apply transforms to the entire sequence.

In seconds you can now change this MOGRT....

 

...to look like this:

 

 

Have fun and let us know what you think!

[Jonas5E1A]

One more request: Could you add replacable CSV-Files... This would be great for animated graphs etc. THIS WOULD REALLY BE AWESOME

[AnnikaKoenig]

This feature was added a while back. Check it out here: https://helpx.adobe.com/cy_en/after-effects/user-guide.html/cy_en/after-effects/using/creating-motio...

[Jonas5E1A]

hmm, i read again about it... while you seem to be able to change some properties, i din`t find a away to exchange a complete file.... so for example i work with a file styleguide-show1.csv and want to make a MoGrt so that i can choose the template to use styleguide-show2.csv, styleguide-show3.csv.... when i export a MOGRT-File there is only this file, no CSV to overwrite. Can´t find a way to (ex-)change the whole CSV?  Or do i miss something?

[AnnikaKoenig]

You need to add the data property to the csv. Let's take this 1:1. I will DM you.

[SquareEyz]

Hi there 🙂

I've been able to start testing this EG media replace BETA workfow- which I've been  rooting for for a long time.

Is there a list of currently supported features and effects?

I built a Mogrt with some time controls (Using Timewarp effect, sliders, checkbox + expressions), that works as expected within AE, but just fails to do a media replace within Premiere, and kinda breaks in other ways to (like the position offset doesnt work either, pictured).

For reference, here is the Mogrt that has the time effects, and fails.
And here is the same one, with the time effects stripped out of it.

I was building a packaing animation, anticipating editors dropping in new timelapse images that we shoot at higher than 4k resolution, and building in the ability to offeset the scale as needed, and a simple zoom in, with controls for zoom speed.

Anyhow- it would be great to have a list of what is currently supported, or even some kind of error log that informs you of what is not supported.

Keep up the good work- I'm very excited for where this is going 🙂
David

[DaciaSaenz]

Hi! 

Unfortunately, any time re-mapping or time effects will not be recognized in Premiere. We just added a warning for this to at least give users a heads up, and that should be available in Beta this week. 

We are still in active development and trying to wrap things up to get it out to all users, so documentation is on the way! There will definitely be more available resources at the time of public release. 

We are also gathering requests for functionality to add to v2 of this feature, and timing properties are high up on my list and something that I'll be advocating for fiercely. Can't give any time frames on when that will be obviously (pun intended), but will keep the channel updated as more news is made available!

Cheers,

Dacia

[SquareEyz]

Thanks for the quick update!
That makes sense- I've been just trying to bump into the limits and figure them out, or work around them.
Keep up the good work, I'm excited about where things are heading.
Cheers,

David

[DaciaSaenz]

Thanks David!! 

I can't wait to see what this awesome community creates with this new feature! And please reach out with feature requests or issues that you encounter along the way. 🙂 

Cheers,

Dacia

[SquareEyz]

Will do, me too 🙂

I've started putting together a 'cookbook' of expression workflow "recipies" that I use to keep track of manouvers I can get my head arround. I wonder if you recomend a place to share these things, and or requests for workarounds? I mean specificaly for AE Mogrt creation for use by editors in Premiere.
Just thought I'd ask, as I've found it can be hard to find.
D

[coendeurloo]

I would really like the ability to have the audio be replaced as well, thanks!

[Mateus Mamede5CA7]

I've been testing this new feature and we see a lot of potential to use it in our workflow. Right now we do some replacement of media in Pre-comps via extendscript. We didn't find a way to trigger the mogrts media replacement in extendscript too. Do you have plans to add this feature to the existing extendscript API? Or is it the plan to add it to the future UPX?

Thank you

[AnnikaKoenig]

Hi Mateus! For the replacement in a Essential Properties workflow in After Effects we have added APIs in Ae 18.0.

Search for 2.3 After Effects 18.0 (March 2021) in this doc: https://buildmedia.readthedocs.org/media/pdf/after-effects-scripting-guide/latest/after-effects-scri...

Scripting methods and attributes to support Media Replacement

• Added: AVItem.isMediaReplacementCompatible
• Added: AVLayer.addToMotionGraphicsTemplate()
• Added: AVLayer.addToMotionGraphicsTemplateAs()
• Added: AVLayer.canAddToMotionGraphicsTemplate()
• Added: Property.alternateSource
• Added: Property.canSetAlternateSource
• Added: Property.setAlternateSource()
• Added relevant match names

Scripting support for a replacement in Premiere Pro is not currently supported. However, you could make it work with the current APIs if you used a sequence as the replacement.

[Suancho83]

Hi! It says:

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         \                         /
          \    This page does     /
           ]   not exist yet.    

This is still not possible?

I'm trying to replace a png inside a mogrt with premiere scripting.

if not possible, can I replace the footage inside the exported mogrt when it is already imported into premiere? 

 app.project.activeSequence.videoTracks[0].clips[0].components[2].properties[0]; (that took me to the png file, but the only property method I found was "display Name" )

Thanks

[AnnikaKoenig]

Sorry about that suan2414560145ec! I updated the links and hope you will now find the resources you need :). Annika

[rafałp69819657]

Great job! May I ask you if there is any way to get a filename or path of replaced media?  I need it to be shown on screen using Source Text for text layer.

I tried many methods but non of them worked.

1. I tired to get filename of layer in comp by using thisComp.layer(2).source.name , this gave me filename of placeholder even after replacing it with other media. 

2. I tired to get filename of comp that will be replace by using comp("Media to replace").source.name. This also didn't worked. 

I need it because we use filename to provide copyright info about media source.

Thank you!