i'll ping the egineers and write back here with their answer. ... View more

you'd probably want to implement the async processing on an AEGP. however, an effect plugin can also act as an AEGP! you can just call the same aegp registration callbacks on an effect and have it receive idle_hook calls. just note that these calls will not be associated to any specific instance. it will act exactly like a separate AEGP that is unaware of it hosting plugin.   as i already know that you know, interacting with AE can only be done during idle hook on the main thread. aquire frames during these time slots using the render suite, and then pass them to some other thread for processing to reduce the ui thread's blocking to a minimum. you know the drill. yes, the overall process will be slower than if you blocked the main thread and went to town will frame checkouts, but hey, it's an acceptable compromise between performance and user experience. (IMHO)   as for launching that process with a button, it's very much possible. create a button control and make it supervised. you'll receive a call to your "user changed param" function, from which you can trigger the process. ... View more

sorry, permier is not my strong suite. i can say that the state should be different for every frame if the input layer (or any other layer param) is a video that changes from frame to frame, so even if the param values remain constant the state should change from frame to frame. so i don't know why it would be different in premier. ... View more

Indeed update parame ui is not the ideal call during which to set the default param value, but that cal is triggered when the effect is applied while user chaged param is not. So... I won't tell anyone if you won't. Use AEGP_SetStreamValue to set the param value. It will work during update params ui.   As for telling a resetup for a duplicate from a reload, that's part of the complication... Lookup previus discussions in the forum for how to tackle that. ... View more

in general, the "sequential" render scheme doesn't play well into AE's rendering pipeline. you could: 1. do a series of input checkouts for any arbtirary time regardless of the time of the currently rendered frame (as shown in the "Checkout" sample project. but i guess you already know that. the donwside being that if the user skips to some distant frame, the checkout time for all previous frames can be insufferable. 2. you could do your processing asynchronously, and therefore sequentially. for exmpale, AE's camera tracker does it's thing on a separate thread and applies the result on the main the thread once done. 3. if during a render you report back to AE that the plugin is out of memory, AE will ignore the result in the output buffer and will not consider that frame rendered. however, that would cause ram previews to stop rendering. ... View more

in short: no. in long: sequence setup (and ususally all other sequence data calls) usually happen without the call having a specific instance associated to the call. that means the passed params array contains junk data, and trying to aquire an AEGP_EffectRef will result in a crash. so although is seems logical to change params during the sequence data call, it's technically not possible. the way to go is to set a flag in the new squence data saying "this is a brand new instance, and it should be treated", then then checking this flag during idle_hook or during UPDATE_PARAMS_UI, and making the change accordingly (and not to forget to set that flag off...). ... View more

The AE SDK is shipped with many sample projects. these projects demonstrate the propper usage of almost all API callbacks. they are also good starting points for various plug-in developments, as well as a good place to grab code from.  here's the list of said sample projects in the docs: https://ae-plugins.docsforadobe.dev/intro/sample-projects.html the "CCU" sample project demonstrates a custom comp ui, and along the way shows how to get mouse coordinates in layer space. ... View more

mixing an effect is possible and not problematic in most cases. however, that won't solve this issue. indeed, the mouse data and conversion callbacks are only available during ui event calls. however, you could emulate that stuff. the mouse position can be gotten directly directly via the operating system. you can also create a layer-to-comp matrix (and vice versa) using an AEGP call to get the layer and camera matrices. it's a bit of a hassle to set up, but by all means possible. the one "unknown" there would be the offset between the screen mouse point and the AE window of interest... PF_ConvertLocalToGlobal only works during ui events... ... View more

the mouse coordinates are part of the data passed to the plugin on a ui event call. take a look at the "CCU" sample project, it's implemented there. no solution required, just copy paste from there. ... View more

here are vivd light and linear light formulated: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct2d/blend ... View more

yes, there is such api. a few of the CompositeSuite callbacks performs compositing with a specified transfer mode. the simplest of which is AEGP_TransferRect, and it takes a PF_CompositeMode arguemnt.    as for the math of the transfer modes,  there's no code in the sdk being compiled that can show you how they're calculated, but here's a very good explanations on most of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend_modes meybe if you google hard enough you'll also find code samples or each, but the wiki page explains the math pretty well. 🙂 if i recall correctly, there's also such a page by adobe explaining asll the rest of the transfer modes. ... View more

1. on what line does your code crash? 2. not that i think it's the problem, but you're not checking the state of outAvailablePB before conditionally calling the script. 3. you're not checking if outResultPH is non null before locking it. 4. you can use AEGP_CreateNullInComp instead of javascript, if you'd like... ... View more

you can now manipulate masks using epxressions. so your plugin can write it's output mask data as an expressions instead of overwriting the original shape on param. ... View more

yeah, this is kind of an optimization blindspot in the SDK. some plug-ins don't need an input. for example fractal noise, particle world, ect... alas, in the current AE workflow the input must be checked out. why must it be checked out BEFORE checking out the output? as to enforce a situation where you might release the input before checking out the output, thus not occupying memory for both input and output at the same time. but again, this scheme missed the scenrio where the input is not required at all. ... View more

i think you can get idle_hook calls during playback, and operate within them. you wound't want, however, to do lengthy opration on these slots while playback is running and it would block the UI thread until your plugin returns from that call...   during playback i only see the display time in the comp window changing. i highly doubt it, but maybe AEGP_GetItemCurrentTime would change during playback? it doesn't change while rendering...   another long shot would be to implement an effect with a custom UI. there's a UI event called PREVIEW, which should update during a, well, preview. alas, i've never seen it implemented.   trying to think outside the box, perhaps an EMP plugin (a plug in that receives the comp buffer to display on some external monitor) receive a timecode for the displayed frame... if they dont' receive a timecode, perhaps you could render some parsable timecode with the frame that your emp plugin can analyize to deduce the currently displayed frame.   sorry, not much good news from me... ... View more

your options are to either use an arb param (hidden or visible), or sequence data. with an arb param the user can undo/redu changes, but hitting the "reset" button will force the param back to it's default value. with sequence data, there's no undo/redo, but the data survives a reset. ... View more

awwww! ❤️ ... View more

Dude! you're crushing it! way to go! ... View more

to tell the string for the color space you need, read the content of "app.project.workingSpace" while that color space is the active one. then you can copy it to the assignment operation. ... View more

well... you can't tell in advance the order in which AEGPs get unloaded, so some functionality may not be accessible during death hook. it's safe to assume that the ui won't update during the death sequence. you could launch a system alert modal if you have to... ... View more

using the C SDK AEGP_SetWorkingColorSpace will do the job. with javascript you can set: app.project.workingSpace = "Rec.709 Gamma 2.4"; ... View more

i think AEGP_GetLayerCurrentTime with AEGP_LTimeMode set to layer time should do the trick. ... View more

Easiest way is to use a javascript prompt. Take a look at this discussion: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/file-prompt-with-aegp-executescript/m-p/14154037   Search the forum, you'll find more discussions for this task. ... View more

honest to god, that makes no sense to me... i would strongly suggest you investigate further becuase the actual problem may be lurking in the shadows it will manifest in some unexpected ways. ... View more