Video Previews for Motion Graphics Templates Thumbnails in After Effects (Beta) 24.2.0x22

[Theresa Rostek]

We're excited to announce that starting in After Effects (Beta) 24.2.0 build 22, you'll have the choice to export your .mogrt thumbnail with a video preview of the primary composition. Additionally, all .mogrt thumbnails will export at a full 16:9 resolution instead of being letterboxed. 

  

In After Effects, in the Essential Graphics panel, select Export Motion Graphics Template… Select the Include video preview checkbox to create a video preview, or deselect it to create a static thumbnail.  

In Premiere Pro, open the Essential Graphics panel and hover scrub over your .mogrt to see it animate. 

Tell us what you think, your feedback is appreciated! 

[_nicdean]

Thank you to the team for shipping this! Beautiful update

[Alex White]

That's awesome! Does it generate sprites or MP4 video inside the MOGRT file?

[Theresa Rostek]

@Alex White It creates an mp4 video inside of the .mogrt package

[Jarle Leirpoll]

Fantastic! Does it also get rid of the super-strange aspect ratio of the AE MOGRT thumbnails in Premiere Pro?

All of them should be square by default IMO, as the real aspect ratio of a MOGRT could be anything between 16x9 and 9x16 (plus some more). But it would be nice if the background would show the boundaries of the MOGRT. Black (transparent) areas are now rendered as black, as they probably should, but since the background of a thumbnail is also black, the boundaries do not show.

[Theresa Rostek]

Hi Jarle,

The thumbnail now fills the 16:9 size. You can see the new thumbnail on the left, with the old behavior on the right, and vertical mogrt export on the bottom for comparison. 

Thanks for your feedback! For the boundaries of the mogrt, what are you envisioning for that? 

Best,

Theresa

[Jarle Leirpoll]

Hi Theresa, I've tried to do some Photoshopping to illustrate my point. Most MOGRTs I make are NOT full screen, and they're NOT all 16/9. I think the previews should be square, not 16x9 - that's SO 2022.  🙂

In a square preview box, the 16x9 MOGRTs and the 9x16 MOGRTs would fill the same area. Why should 9x16 MOGRTs be smaller in the preview? Makes no sense to me. 

Also, see how easy it is to see the boundaries when I changed the background from black to dark gray? Everyone can see what aspect ratio they are at a glance. Please don't give us a black background outside of the boundaries! Anything else but black will do.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Transparent Areas in a MoGRT thumbnail (static or animated) should be Checkered - just like the transparent area in PS/AE. I asked for this about 5 years ago - this is expected behavior. 

And a single color won't work cos there may be a case where the MoGRT's design has a gray edge. 

Adobe had had  long-held practice where transparent areas are visually depicted with a Checkered Area - why change things? 

And other than working on automatically creating these Thumbnails - please improve the PLAYBACK functionality in PPro's EGP - this hover-to-preview is strange, not human.  🙂    Can we have a Play, Pause, Stop and be able to drag the playhead PLUS a Full Size Mode for preview?

[Theresa Rostek]

Hi Roland,

Thanks for your feedback! You've got my brain thinking about what a revamped EGP experience could be.

Best,
Theresa

[Shebbe]

>please improve the PLAYBACK functionality in PPro's EGP - this hover-to-preview is strange, not human.

I'm not against a mode where all thumbnails play back or play/loop only selected, but hover srub is resonably common behaviour in other apps like Resolve for example. If the other functionality would be added a user choice between them would be more preferred by me.

[Theresa Rostek]

Hi Jarle, 

Again, great feedback and great points about mogrts moving past broadcast sizes.

Best,

Theresa

[ribaslucas]

I fear the new bugs that will come with it :C

[kulss]

Just last week I learned how to get into the MOGRT and add my custom thumb.mp4 besides thumb.png, great timing! Hahah

Great update, thank you! Do you think it would be possible in the future to have a preview without hovering the whole frame from left to right to see the animation?

[Theresa Rostek]

Thank you for your feedback. Are you envisioning an on rollover preview, and on click preview, or something else?

[Alex White]

You can use a free version of Aeviewer to preview MOGRT, AEP, and PRPROJ files on mouse-over. You can even import the file the double click.

[Marissa Joyner]

So looking forward to this update! It would be great if the video container itself was responsive to the mogrt aspect ratio instead of trying to fit all video sizes into a 16:9 container. The hover scroll playback can be a little weird, I would prefer the preview to auto-play on hover.

[Alex White]

Sorry for self-promotion, but you can already do that and even more with Aep To Mogrt Pro.

[Theresa Rostek]

Thanks for your feedback @Marissa Joyner!

[naim khan347338186gx0]

This is what we have been waiting for a long time...!!

[Sean McKeown-Young]

I'm running into a weird issue. I have an animated logo that is all black. On the black transparency, it appears as black on black making the thumbnail useless because it just looks like a black image on a black background. Is there a way of replacing the thumbnail with a static screenshot or something with a white background that doesn't carry over when using the MOGRT?

[kulss]

There's a couple of ways to solve this. None are elegant nor intuitive, but these work!

1. You can add a custom thumbnail on the After Effects Beta according to this post (haven't tried this method yet), it seems to be the easiest way.
2. What also would work is to add a white shape layer behind your logo, click "Set Poster Time" on Essential Graphics and then delete the white shape layer. That way you'll create a custom static thumbnail and you'll be able to see the logo easily. However, if you do another slight change to the MOGRT I think you'll have to go through this process again
3. You could also get inside the MOGRT and replacing thumb.png

[Theresa Rostek]

You'd have to use the workaround everyone was using before this feature addition to add custom previews.

• Create the png and mp4 with the backgrounds you want (both need to be 640x360)
• rename the mogrt extension to zip
• unzip it
• replace the previews
• rezip
• rename extension to mogrt
• Check in Premiere that it works

[_nicdean]

@Sean McKeown-Young_replacing MOGRT preview media (thumbnails + video) is super easy with Aep To Mogrt Pro. Highly recommend instead of doing it manually