Help with Project Panel order

[Guest]

Hey guys,
I am new to After Effects and am having an issue with the "Alphabetical Order" of my project panel.
I bought a file/ template from someone and he has a tutorial on Youtube about how to create using his template. The issue that I am having is that in the Project Panel, when opening subfolders, the numbers aren't in chronological order, they just seem to be random.

I have attached 2 photos, the first one (In Order) is showing that everything is in chronological order.
The second picture shows that the numbers are scattered/ random.

In the tutorial on Youtube, the guys numbers are in order. I contacted him and he said that it's not an issue, and that it may have something to do with a setting on my computer, but I would like to learn how to correct it so that I at least can set it up properly 🙂

Thanks

[Mylenium]

Not sure what you are asking. This is just how it works. Unless the numbers are padded with leading zeros they will be sorted this way. Has never been any different and it's consistent. Your folders are only sorted correctly because there are only four and they have been named sequentially. Really nothing wrong here.

Mylenium

[Guest]

Hey Mylenium, thanks for the reply.
My concern is with the "Frame Number Order" in the second picture.
It starts with Frame 1, then jumps to Frame 10, 11, 12 etc. then goes to Frame 2, Frame 3, etc.
I was just wondering why it begins with Frame 1, but then jumps to 10 instead of 2.

[ShiveringCactus]

Computers are dumb machines capable of very complex tasks, (and humans are very complex machines capable of dumb mistakes)

What's happening is that your computer is taking the filename as a string and then sorting that alphabetically.  When it does that, it sorts all the 1s first, then the 2s, so you get 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14...., 2, 3, 4.  To counter that, you need to rename file 1 to be file 01, file 2 to be 02 etc... then they will sort, 01,02,...10,11,12

[Guest]

Oh interesting. Love the detailed reply, thanks for that 😄

I will try this out and see how I go. Appreciate it 🙂

[Mylenium]

It's how alphabetical ordering works in general on the computer. Unless you make specific provision for "smart" sorting algorithms that actually compare the numbers (Maya and Nuke have this for instance), the first occurance at the character index matters and then only the length of the string. Not saying its convenient, but it basically has never been any different. Can't see how this would be a problem in your case, though, as clearly the frames have been imported separately intentionally and thus all that matters is how they are arranged on the timeline, anyway. This would only be a concern if you imported them as a sequence and somehow the order were wrong.

Mylenium

[Guest]

Appreciate the detailed reply 🙂
You're right, it's not really a big deal, but I was just curious about it because of how the guy who created it had them in "smart" order.
Thanks for taking your time to help me out 😄

[P.M.B]

If i were you i wouldn't buy anything from that guy again. Fairly common knowledge that when you set up images for sequencing they need to be padded so the computer can read them in order.  Well common with people render image sequences.  If the dude is selling sequences he should know that.   The number of padding needed depends on the total number of images. 

[Guest]

Hey PMB, appreciate the reply.

Tbh, the guy has done amazing work, so the purchase was definitely worth it. The order of the files in his After Effects was perfect, so yeah, not sure why mine isn't in order.

Anyway, I would like to learn what you are talking about, could you recommend a Youtube video that explains your reply?

[Mitanshu35324888f6e8]

If you click on the top corner where the 'Name' is, the project panel will sort it ascending or descending , I hope this clears your doubt.