PF_AppProgressDialogUpdate problem in AE SDK 2017.1

[ThatMGuy]

Hi,

I'm writing an After Effects plugin using AE SDK 2017.1 (14.2) on Windows 10. My installed After Effects is up to date (2017.2 Release, 14.2.0.198). The progress bar in my progress dialog isn't displaying correctly. Before a render is started, the bar is correct but the text below is wrong. And during a render, both are wrong.

Before rendering starts: correct bar size and %, incorrect text below it. I put in a sleep to artificially delay before render starts. Normally this state is just a quick flash.

Once render starts, bar size, %, and text below always show zero, regardless of countL and totalL values.

My plugin creates the dialog, does multiple renders in a loop, and disposes of the dialog. Here's my code related to the dialog:

// Create dialog

SUITE_APP->PF_CreateNewAppProgressDialog(reinterpret_cast<const A_UTF16Char*>(L"Exporting to NewBlue Titler PRO"), nullptr, false, &m_dlgPtr);

// Add a composition to render queue and start render

SUITE_RENDERQUEUE->AEGP_AddCompToRenderQueue(compH, path.c_str());

SUITE_RENDERQUEUE->AEGP_SetRenderQueueState(AEGP_RenderQueueState_RENDERING);

// Update dialog after each render

SUITE_APP->PF_AppProgressDialogUpdate(m_dlgPtr, currentVal, currentTotal);

// Dispose of dialog

SUITE_APP->PF_DisposeAppProgressDialog(m_dlgPtr);

It's as if the dialog gets reset every time a render begins. And the text below the bar ("Saving project... 90% complete") doesn't get updated at all from PF_AppProgressDialogUpdate.

Also, the After Effects CC 2017.1 SDK Guide PDF documents App Suite 5. But the SDK actually has PFAppSuite6, and all 3 dialog-related functions are new in App Suite 6.

Any suggestions to get the dialog's progress bar displaying correctly during renders?

[Zac Lam · Accepted solution]

Hi Marc,

I just touched base with the developer who added PF_CreateNewAppProgressDialog() to get some insight.  It was originally intended for unifying UI of lengthy main-thread processes, not renders.  The above use case mixes the two and wasn't something we anticipated.  If you're interested, we could make this a feature request.  Or, perhaps you could not display your dialog during renders?

[ThatMGuy]

Hi Zac,

Thanks for looking into it. Yes, I'd like to make that a feature request. In my particular use case, the processing is quick and most of the time is spent in renders. And there can be multiple renders, with different layers turned on & off.

Thanks,

Marc