packaging extensions for Adobe AE?

[brendanT]

I've written an CEP5 extension for Adobe AE CC and would like to distribute it but extension manager doesn't appear to support AE. How does one go about distributing extensions for AE?

[Zac Lam · Accepted solution]

Hi brendanT,

You can sign your extension using the Signing Toolkit here:

Download Extension Builder 3 - Adobe Labs

... and distribute it manually, using your own installer, or using the Online Packager for creative.adobe.com/addons.  For the Online Packager, here is a useful list of path tokens:

Path tokens

[brendanT]

Great. Thanks Zac.

[brendanT]

One question. I need to tweak Extension Builder for CC 2014 products but After Effects is not listed in step 3 (https://blogs.adobe.com/cssdk/2014/06/adobe-extension-builder-and-creative-cloud-2014.html). Do you have the appropriate host name parameters for AE? The extension isn't geared solely to AE but I'd definately want to include it.

[Zac Lam]

Sure, per the latest documentation for the Adobe Extension SDK for CC 2014 here:

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/creativesuite/pdfs/CC14_Extension_SDK.pdf

on page 7 it mentions After Effects uses the identifier 'AEFT'.  CC 2014 is version 13.x.

If you do post your extension to the Add-ons site, I'd be interested to get a link to see what you're working on.

[brendanT]

Hi again Zac. I finally have everything working but I can't get the producer's portal to accept my .zxp. I correctly reads the manifest for the AEFT entry but then tells me I need to support at least one Adobe application. I'm pretty sure this is an error with the way the site scans the zxp. Any thoughts?

Anyway, If you'd like to check out the extension you can download it at http://rooflessstudios.com/MarkersWindow.zxp . It's a tool to improve the usability of AE's markers by placing all of a comps markers into a sortable table that displays each markers data (ie. time, durration, comments etc). When you double click on any given row your timeline indicator will be moved to the time value of that row's marker. Make sense? I think its pretty darn neat.

[Zac Lam]

Hi Brendan,

Thanks for your patience.  Although I'm not on the team that handles the Producer Portal, I've reproduced the problem, and have a request to the appropriate engineers to look into it.

[Zac Lam]

If anyone else is having the same problem Brendan describes in post #5 above, please let me know.  Thanks.

[tardigrade01]

Has anyone found a way to create auto updates for manual AE Extension packages the way you can set up auto updates with Extension Manager for other apps?

[bodymovin]

hi Zac, I'm having the same issue.

Is there an official way to package cep extensions for After Effects?

[brendanT]

Hi. I received the following from adobe regarding uploading to the portal -

"the code for the product which should be AEFX and not AEFT."

I haven't tried this yet.

If you're problem is with the packaging process I figured out a method that works. It's a hack so if Zac doesn't give you better advice I can detail what I did.

[Zac Lam]

If you rename the identifier 'AEFT' to 'AEFX', it won't be loaded by After Effects.

There appears to be a problem currently with the Producer Portal when scanning ZXPs that only support After Effects.

Hernan, I'll contact you off-list, to help get your ZXP listed on Adobe Add-ons.

[brendanT]

If you're problem is creating a package that installs properly here is what I did.

Open Terminal cd to the extension folder where your package is. Run the following command filling in your info where appropriate.

/Applications/ZXPSignCmd -sign YourExtension YourExtension.zxp yourCert.p12 yourCertPassword

Change the resulting .zxp to .zip and decompress. Now use Packager to create you zxp from this decompressed folder. You can set the installation folder to $adobecommon/CEP/extensions/.

I might avoid packager altogether but I can find no information on how to set the installation path in ZXPSignCmd.

This is a pretty lame hack but it's the only way I've found to get things working properly. Hopefully someone else will have some information that helps.

[bodymovin]

thanks brendan for your help.

I'll try it out.

Did you get it on the add-ons that way or do you install it manually?