Add the ability to keyframe an imported After Effects MOGRT

[aTomician]

It would be extremely useful to be able to keyframe the controls in Premiere Pro for a MOGRT (Motion Graphic Template) created in After FX. I create a template in AFX, add it to CC libraries, I can import this into Premiere and adjust the controls, but I can't keyframe them. This would take the power of MOGRT's to a whole new level.

I have extensively documented the process I'm trying to do here: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/255599

[jackthegiantkiller]

Yeah, I've finally hit this dull limitation in Premiere. I put together a mogrt in AE for use as a broadcast package, which the ability to change lower 3rd's, whether they have in/out animation, box width etc. I really thought that at the very least users could keyframe basic checkboxes or pulldown menus within the mogrt to build sequences out. The mogrt still works fine but the user has to chop it up a dozen times to isolate these transitions. Please bump this up!

[aTomician]

Hello @jackthegiantkiller - seen you're stalking the posts on animating MOGRT's  😜 - I reckon you're following a similar journey to the one I went on a couple years back.  It is frustrating, but I'm not aware of any great option for this yet.  I guess on one hand, I think I should be thankful that we have any level of integration like this - for all of Premiere Pro's faults, the MOGRTS are a great system.  On the other hand, I think: just simply invoke Tiny Inception AE every keyframe - could be cached in the background after first run to keep things fast. 

However, I have had some success by linking keyframes to single control elements.  For instance, you can create a "Keyframe" slider and then a "Value" input - so the keyframe slider is the time, and the value is the keyframe value (3d vector, 2d point etc).  I can plug these into Premiere Pro and get essentially the equivalent of keyframing.  It's clunky, adds extra complexity in the scripting which is a PITA.

However, it does work reliably and I'm still using MOGRTS today like this that I created years ago.  Here's an example of a hefty one I created.  It allows up to 5 effects, which can be enabled / disabled individually, each with their own unique start time and duration.

So with some patience, and if you know what you want, stuff can be done.  Hint: I use a the `linear()` a lot!

But for now...  things are limited 🙂  I hope you manage to find a solution that works for you!  Shout if I can help.

PS: for the record, I spent a week trying another workaround for this: I added a string input, and then in After Effects, I basically took the string, parsed it into as JSON array, and then used the array to create valid keyframes and custom values for them.  So all you have to do in Premiere Pro is insert a valid JSON string.

This does NOT work.  It works in After Effects alone, but Dynamic Link seems to prevent the use of some advanced JS functions, and it was only after a week of debugging that I found out that this method just doesn't work for MOGRTs!

[jackthegiantkiller]

Oh wow, this is an amazing workaround, albeit a wee bit beyond my scripting skills at this point! I am improving, and have rebuilt these to function better, client is happy. Thank you for your suggestions.