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I've created a few user presets and passed them to new versions of After Effects as I've updated, but these presets do not show up in After Effects 2021's Animation Presets folder in the Effects panel. I've hit the Refresh List button in the panel without luck. They show up and work fine in 2020 and I can confirm they've copied to the User Presets folder in Finder.
I'm on a 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max running Monterey 12.3.1 using AE 18.4.0. Presets were probably created in cc2018 and have worked fine in 2019 & 2020. They are .ffx files and just include an expression which adds a little bounce to parameters.
I haven't been able to find other posts describing something similar. Hopefully someone here has some insight.
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Can you post a screenshot of where you copied your presets to that shows the file path of the folder? Alternatively, you could create a test preset in AE 2021, then select it in the Effects & Prestes panel, click the hamburger menu and choose "Reveal in Explorer." This will guarantee you're being navigated to the correct User Presets folder.
On a separate note, have you given AE 2022 a try? There are so many performance features that make After Effects so much nicer to use. You can install it while leaving 2021 installed (just make sure to tell the CC app not to uninstall previous versions).
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Thanks for the reply. Screenshot attached. I've copied/pasted to my computer's User / Documents / Adobe / After Effects 2021 / User Presets folder and also to the folder in the Applications / After Effects 2021 / Presets folder. Then I hit Refresh List in the Effects panels and no luck so far. I've restarted the computer as well and it still doesn't show up.
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Did you try what I suggested about above creating a dummy preset? If it shows up in that same folder and works, then my guess is that there's an issue reading your .ffx files. That could be a bug in AE 2021 or somehow all the presets got messed up (which doesn't seem as likely). If a test preset (created in AE 2021) does show up in the folder an is accessable, then it's worth trying in AE 2022 to see if the issue is fixed.
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I did not get a chance to try the dummy preset test yet. I'll try that later this evening. However, even the folder I created doesn't show up? Are empty folders ignored by the presets panel?
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Correct, empty folders don't show up. As soon as I copy an existing preset into an empty folder and refresh my list, both the folder and preset appear.
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I did try the test with a dummy preset and it worked. My original user-created preset folder showed up with the test preset. Does AE 2021 read the .ffx files differently than 2020? Or maybe it's a Intel vs M1 issue? I'll just recreate those presets. I haven't tried 2022 yet.
Thanks for your help!
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You're welcome! And no, nothing should have changed with .ffx files between 2020 and 2021. I doubt it's Intel vs. your M1 since presets are just text files; it's plug-ins that have to be updated to support Apple Silicon. Even ScriptUI panels should work perfectly between both versions. Now I'm really curious if the problem is solved with 2022. Would love to hear if you get a chance to try it. Plus Multi-Frame Rendering is soooo great.