Immigration
Version: 1.2 Sign up to be notified by email when a new version of this script is posted
HYPA recently completed a project involving thousands of files from multi-pass rendering making up many image sequences. The finder struggled to list the directory contents, even after several minutes, however Immigration sailed through the files and immediately became an essential part of our workflow saving lots of time and streamlining the process. I can’t imagine working with After Effects and image sequences without it.
Tim Clapham – Hypa TV
Immigration turns the pain usually associated with importing and batch replacing files in After Effects a joy. While browsing for import, it shows file sequences as one line item instead of a long list of files. Immigration uses a custom algorithm to scan the file system at speeds dramatically faster than even the OS can. In our testing a server folder with 30,000 files that takes over 5 minutes to open in the finder opens in 12 seconds in Immigration (and that includes file-sequence detection!). If you frequently find yourself waiting for the OS to open folders then you will love Immigration.
You can then select more than one file or sequence and either import them all at once or batch replace files already in your project. You can easily assign a frame rate to all imported files at once. Immigrations’ Auto-Match Replace™ algorithm will automatically match files with similar names so you don’t have to. It shows you a preview so you can make sure the matches are what you want. It color codes the match depending on how close it is. This is convenient if you name your revised files with a new version number or date.
If your files are already neatly organized in folders, Immigration will duplicate and maintain the folder hierarchy within the After Effects project.
You can customize Immigration to only search for certain file extensions, and file age. So for example you can tell Immigration to only display .exr files that are less than an hour old. You can also tell it to include or ignore folder by name so if you would like it to ignore a folder in your hierarchy (an archives folder for example) you can do that easily.
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- Immigration Import UI
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- Immigration Auto-Match Preview UI
Version history
- 1.0 Initial Release Aug 2009
- 1.01 Fixed Help Window Buttons (Windows Only)
- 1.02 Fixed Windows Help Window Centering issue (Windows Only)
- 1.031 Fixed Hours/Days display in browser window when using file age 08/09
- 1.032 Fixed small licensing issue 08/09
- 1.033 Added http://license.aescripts.com info 09/09
- 1.034 Internal update
- 1.035 Internal update
- 1.036 Minor display window fixes 03/10
- 1.1 Made CS5 compatible, instructions collapsed state is now saved 04/10
- 1.2 Fixed bug when replacing layers that are referenced by expressions 08/10
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excellent lloyd.
love the new design of the site as well…
can’t go wrong with a little bit of grain
Lloyd this is awesome, instead of wasting 15 minutes or more to import all the sequences, rgb, ao, masks…..it just took me 10 seconds!! I work in after effects for 10 years now, and always had this boring part of importing the sequences for compositing, and you just make it simple..
Great script, thanks and keep up!
Thanx for the script its great, can you explain the difference between buying the single or site licence?
Thanx
Site license enables you to use the same license on an unlimited number of machines on the same network. If you are just using the script for yourself then the single license will do.
Thanks for the script, it works great and saves a lot of time!
Do you think that it’s possible to have an option to use the foldername instead of the filename for a sequence? Much like when importing a sequence and checking the ‘Force alphabetical order’ box.
Thanks!
@Thaumar – I will add that feature request for the next version
This is an awesome script… It comes in handy because right now I am dealing with abt 100 3D passes and this script has saved me prob 4 hours of work in the last week. I do wish for an option to choose what alpha we want to conform to. We use pre multiply a lot and sometimes the AE guess is not correct…
Thanks though, amazing script!
@P-Lo – Noted for a future version. In the meantime you can into Preferences->Import and set “Interpret Unlabeled Alpha As” to what you would like it to be (instead of “Guess”)
It would be good if you could figure out how to batch replace psd layer files that have been imported as a sequence! *hint hint*
Great script nonetheless, saves heaps of time thanks!!
Hey Lloyd,
I don’t normally post comments about scripts.. but immigration needed me to speak up.
I’ve been doing 3D and After Effects for over ten years now.. And I have huffed and puffed about how stupid the import into AE is.. and finally you solve my problem.
thankyou thankyou thankyou..
any chanch you could add pixel aspect ratio to the import section ??
thanks again
Alex
hi Lloyd,
How can i make this run on After effects 7.0 on windows, i have put the jsxBin file in the script folder but cant run it through scripts menu, it say an error. I have seen the installation video but that doesnt seem to cover AE 7.0.
Please let me know how to get this working .
PS. i am fairly new to after effects.
Thanks
All the scripts on the site have icons indicating which versions they are compatible with. Immigration is compatible with CS3 and above.
Just wanted to come back and thank you again…
168 different 3d renders varying length etc..
this tool is a dream..
thankyou so much…
O… M… G… This script saved my bacon tonight! My C4D Net Render dumped 75,000 images into a single folder. Trying to even *open* that folder was painfully slow. Trying to import into AE was even more grueling — beachballs forever!
The good folks at the CGTalk C4D boards recommended this script… and wow! Immigration is simply a marvel! If you do any type of multi-pass rendering, this is a must-have script in your toolbox.
Any chance of Adobe integrating this into CS5?
About 1 in 4 times, Immigration isn’t picking up any image sequences in folders I direct it to. What could be the cause of this? Are there any naming no-nos that it doesn’t like?
This is such a fantastic script Lloyd! For anyone dealing with 3D and compositing in AE this is such a great improvement to the workflow.
Much Appreciated.
Hello, i’m very interesting with your script but there is a big hole, he doesn’t understand sequences with no padding like a sequence containing “xx.0.jpg … xx.100.jpg … xx.1000.jpg”
thanks
PS: I’m using the demo in aecs4 on win7
Yes, this is a known limitation of the script. When you first run the script there is a dialog box explicitly telling you this. The reason is that files are read in from the system in order and the files are not in order when they don’t have padding. Immigration could sort the files to get around this but this would kill all the speed benefits and I think this is one of Immigration’s main features. If I can think of another workaround that maintains the speed I will incorporate it into a future version.
Hi,
I wan tot try this out – but it downloads JSXbin file for the demo version – it’s not covered in the FAQ what to do with that.
Demo – OSX 10.6 AE CS4
jsxbin is a binary jsx file but it is installed and run the same way. Install it in the ScriptUI Panels folder according to the installation guide: http://aescripts.com/faq/how-to-install-and-run-scripts/
By the way, if you don’t have permission to install scripts in the ScriptUI Panels folder you can also run it by selecting File->Scripts->Run Script File
Awesome script
Does not work with file names in Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Maybe others, Dont know. Maybe there is some setting I can adjust. Im pretty retarded when it come to AE scripts
Error message:
Path not valid or file no longer exists or insufficient permission to access file.
Drag in import is working fine for these files im receiving from china.
Looking forward to future versions.
See you around Lloyd
Mike Moore
Definitely have not tested it with chinese file names, but will definitely look into it for a future version.
I’ve used this script with much success in the past in CS4– definitely changed my workflow when working with CG, but now Im trying to use for the first time in CS5 with latest version and having issues with being able to select more than one seq at a time, its like selection array isnt updating. This makes Immigration pretty useless on CS5 until it gets fixed.
(Mac) v1.1
User Error: restarted computer and works perfect. Thanks for writing script.
How can I upgrade my version for the CS5 compatibility?
Just download the free trial, it will automatically recognize your license.
Thank you sir!
Love this one – Thanks Lloyd.
v1.2 doesn’t seem to like my naming convention of putting [brackets] in my folder name. It completely skips it and all enclosed folders.
I’m in the middle of shooting a feature right now and because my editing system is so old, I’ve resorted to offline editing. As a test, I wanted to see how forty minutes of my movie looked in full HD on a tv, so I imported my Vegas timeline into AE and started the task of replacing all my offline files with their onlines by hand (I’m going from .avi to .mov). I got to thinking, “There has to be a script for this”. I found Immigration and it was love at first sight! I will most definitely be purchasing this script, you saved me at least 10 hours of work!
Thank you!
-El