A guy I know, found a coding or scripting tool to alter Adobe files outside the Apps. So you don't need to start up any Adobe App, but you can alter parameters found inside the Adobe file. Think like the Source Text within an After Effects project. Once my acquaintance told me the name of this coding / scripting system but I forgot and he refuses to tell me about it again. It's made by Adobe. If I'm correct, it's Java-like. What happens is that you see a little black console box. Then your script / code changes whatever you like within the project. In all the years I have been working with Adobe, I have never been able to find anything about this system and also now, I have not been able to find it back again. It's that hard to find. It's not for writing things within the apps. So no expressions and such. It's a little something like a jsx. Quite crude but it uses instructions from the specific Adobe site which allows for extremely powerfull, deep and quick changes within Adobe files. I hope one of you know about this.
however, if you save an AE project as XML (it's in the "save as" menu), then the project file becomes "text editor friendly". so such a tool is very much possible to make.
Thanks but that's not what I need. We already built an automated rendering system based on txt files that get updated. This is however, running into limitations when After Effects gets updated. You then have to confirm for every AEP file you use, that something has changed. This is an unwanted side effect when you link text to an AEP. This doesn't happen when you alter the AEP file internally. I can however, only find layer names and change those. The Source Text requires hex decoding. What I need is an option to run something that changes some parameters inside the aep file in a robust way and then having it rendered, prefereably by aerender.
ExtendScript is the scripting language for Adobe apps. You still need the app to be running in order to use it. Some apps, (After Effects being one of them) can be run headlessly, and you can do some editorial operations.
Aside from that each app is different. Some like AE and Premiere can be exported to an XML structure, but that will require a lot of reverse engineering and trial and error to get stuff to work.
Smoothest path forward for automating Adobe projects is using ExtendScript through ScriptUI or a CEP panel for more complex workflows and UIs. Some more info on the differences between Scripts, Extensions, and Plugins here:
No, you can't. You'd have to completely reverse-engineer how AE sets those flags for project version and other stuff, which by their own admission is even something the developers struggle with to keep working due to the file format having its limitations and not being ideal. That's a hopeless case.
Maybe not silent. Just received the JSX to launch AE, alter a project in AE and save it in an altered state. That will have to do for now. From there AErender can take it further or maybe even a watchfolder.
Maybe. I'm very bad at using the right terms for whatever. What I mean is that you don't see After Effects opening with the usual screens and windows and whatnot.
Right, sounds like you mean headless. You have a few options:
Easy: You can use aerender if you need to run a script and render something.
Medium: -noui flag in the regular AE execulatble. This comes with some caveats.
Advanced: There's also aerendercore on Mac or AfterFX.com on Windows, which are essentially After Effects headless clients. You'd need to control these with an invisible CEP panel set to autostart.
That is what I want: use aerender to edit an .aep with extend script. So maybe: open with aerender, edit the project, render it. It would also be fine to just edit it and throw it into a watch folder.
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