Expressions and External Documents
This tutorial explores how to set up an external text document to drive content for items like lower thirds and interstitials. Many many thanks to my friend Maltaannon for the idea to use the #include statement.
In the tutorial, the expression you see works great in CS3, but not in CS4. I wrote a follow up to this for CS4. Many thanks to Lloyd Alvarez for much help on this.
16 Responses to “Expressions and External Documents”
Thank you!!! I was looking for that explanation (in the tutorial) for a long time. Neither VideoCopilot, nor CreativeCow websites addressed this issue as well as you did.
thank you for this pretty usefull tutorial =)
I think your web server butchered the media file http://www.graymachine.com/media/lowerThird2.mov as it only is 2.5 MB and you can only see about the first minute before it cuts off.
Thanks.. I’ll fix this right away.
Wow ! This is helping me a lot for the TV show I’m actualy producing almost weekly !! Thank you Harry !
Glad it helped! It’s been useful for me too
VERY USEFUL and INSPIRED
I am wondering if there is a way to:
1. change numbers (temperatures) in certain positions (on a map)
2. change symbols (clouds sun which are a tga sequence) in certain position also in the same map
Make a weather forecast cards from an external document
Will be great
Thank a lot
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1. So is there a way to attach in that external Document the information:
To enable or not a not a NON text layer
from a list of ten which are in th same comp
2. Can we replace the TXT with an EXCEL file?
EXAMPLE:
Lets say that you want to write all this the Lower thirds (using the external doc)
with the addition of a company logo which VARIES from a list of ten.
Thanks
Excel has additional formatting that will screw up the expression. What needs to happen is someone needs to create a plug-in that will parse raw data like this. I’ve mentioned it to a few people, so hopefully I can push this along to happen, even if I have to do it my own damn self.
As to the first question, yes… the external document is seen just like an expression. So, if the result is an integer, then it should work just fine.
GREAT
Excel file will be INNOVATION
So as for the 1st
“To enable or not (opacity)
a not a NON text layer (logo) from a list of ten (waiting to support the text) which are in th same comp
If i understand well:
1.I have to place in the txt file
a line matching each of ten logos (witch are in that comp in the same position)
to be equal with 0 or 1 (transparent or not)
2. I have to place in each of ten logos the same expression like the text file (to read data from a txt ……)
Greetings, thank you so much for sharing this.
I ran into one problem… I am trying to reference a multiline variable.
When I use carriage returns, After Effects complains that the string constant has not been terminated.
When I add \n to the string, AE just skips over it.
The same thing happens when I concatenate strings with \n.
Any ideas on how to add a linebreak to a variable? Can it be done in AE?
didnt work here
any cs4 windows 7 x64 solution? thanks a lot.
Did you follow the link to the article about CS4? http://www.graymachine.com/2009/04/expressions-and-external-documents-revisited
Thanks my friend! I figured it out. Thanks for helping. My code sucessfull code was:
path = “C:\\test\\test.txt” ;
$.evalFile(path);
text.sourceText = myvar;
// myvar is a var created in test.txt
// in test.txt i wrote :
// myvar = ” my code is working”.
// the message shows up in the screen.
// Yey!