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Question

AFX Script Problem Visual Studio Code

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
July 14, 2021
2 replies
1979 views

Hi,

i recently started scripting and wrote a script in VS Studio for After Effects, which works fine when i run it from Visual Studio. But when i save it and run the script from After Effect it gives me an error message: "unable to execute at line 20..."

which is a function in my script. everything before gets executed.

I have Variables (a,b) in my function because i am looking for several Objects meaning CompItem, FootageItem, Folderitem where I'm looking for specific names as a string.

The Function looks like that:

function graballItems(a, b) {
  var proj, curItem, itemTotal, ItemAry;

  proj = app.project;

  itemTotal = proj.numItems;

  ItemAry = new Array();

  for (var i = 1; i <= itemTotal; i++) {
    curItem = proj.item(i);

    if (curItem instanceof b && curItem.name.indexOf(a) !== -1) {
      ItemAry = curItem;
    }
  }
  return ItemAry;
}

// And i use it like that:

var myCompBeauty = graballItems("CAN_ENDTAG_PRE", CompItem);

But strange though, that it is working from VS Studio.

Does anybody know why the error message appears?

Cheers

Martin

Scripting

This topic has been closed for replies.

Mathias Moehl

Community Expert

The line "ItemAry = new Array()" suggests that you want to return an array of the found items. But in the line

ItemAry = curItem;

you replace your array with a single item.

If you want to grab all items, you most likely want to do

ItemAry.push(curItem)

instead.

Mathias Möhl - Developer of tools like BeatEdit and Automation Blocks for Premiere Pro and After Effects

M

mmueller2Author

Participating Frequently

First of all, thank you both for your quick reply.

I tried to implement the try and catch statement but without any sucess.

I implemented the push item command but recognized that i only need one item not an array so i changed it to just get the curitem. But still the same error.

Last thing i wanted to try to set an alert line by line to check where the code breaks exactly.

Strange enough the script works like that:

function graballItems (a,b){

alert("OK");

var proj,curItem,itemTotal,MyItem;

proj = app.project;

itemTotal = proj.numItems;

for (var i =1; i<= itemTotal; i++){

curItem = proj.item(i);

if (curItem instanceof b && curItem.name.indexOf(a) !== -1 ){

MyItem = curItem;

}

return MyItem;

}

But of course i don't want to have an alert 10 times while the script is running.

Mathias Moehl

Community Expert

also, if you just need a single item, you can change the code as follows:

function graballItems(a, b) {
    alert("OK");
    var proj, curItem, itemTotal;
    proj = app.project;
    itemTotal = proj.numItems;
    for (var i = 1; i <= itemTotal; i++) {
        curItem = proj.item(i);
        if (curItem instanceof b && curItem.name.indexOf(a) !== -1) {
            return curItem;

        }

    }
    throw new Error("could not find the item!");
}

This has two important changes:

- When the first item is found, the search is stopped (which makes the script faster)
- when nothing is found, an error is thrown
If you don't want to throw an error if it was not found, you can also return null or undefined, or whatever your script needs in that case, but then you have to make sure that the code using the function deals with that null properly.

Mathias Möhl - Developer of tools like BeatEdit and Automation Blocks for Premiere Pro and After Effects

Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew

Community Expert

Just tested and it works for me after commenting out that line. Try putting it in a try catch and see if you can get any more info on the error.

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