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pt_EffectSearch
Version: 2.01 Sign up to be notified by email when a new version is posted
This is an all new version rewritten from the ground up.
Search for effects used in your After Effects project. Find where specific effects have been used, turn them on or off, delete them, or link them together to create cloned effect instances.
HOW TO USE:
SEARCH: Click Search to show all effects in your project, or use the search options to find specific ones. The results can be sorted by effect name or layer order.
ACTION MENU: Select one or more effects from the list, then use the Action menu to turn them on or off, or delete them. You can also save the search results to a text file.
LINK EFFECTS: Use this to link effects together, so one effect can be set to control multiple copies throughout a project.
- Select an effect in the list that you want other effects linked to and choose ‘Set Control Effect’ from the link menu.
- Link other copies of the same effect by selecting them in the list and choosing ‘Link Selected Effects’. Or add linked effects directly to selected layers in your comp by choosing ‘Add to Selected Layers’.
If you get any errors when linking effects, make sure the control effect layers and compositions have unique names.
The ‘Expression Links’ column shows the expressions used to make the links. It also shows if any other expressions are applied to the effects, which would be overwritten if the effect was linked. To remove links, select effects in the list and choose ‘Remove Links’. This causes effects to revert to their pre-linked values.
Note: Some ‘custom data’ effect properties (e.g. Levels Histogram) can’t be linked, but there may be alternate effects you can use. For example, use Levels (Individual Controls) instead of the regular Levels effect.
Upgrade notice: If you previously bought pt_EffectSearch v1 (before February 2011) you can receive a discount code equal to the same amount as you paid for it. To request this discount code please go here.
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- pt_EffectSearch UI
Version History:
- v2.01 – Fixed small bug where UI stops responding. (Feb 2011)
- v2.0 – (Feb 2011)
- Rewritten for CS4+
- Link effects to create cloned effect instances.
- Bug fixes and stability improvements.
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Great script – just what the doctor ordered – but…
Have a large number of layers(900+, I know I know, but trust me it needs to be this way) They each have 2 effects and I’m using the script to turn off one of them on all layers. How long should this take? I have the latest version as of Oct 22/11 and I’ve been sitting here for 20 min catching up on other work waiting for some kind of result. (CS5.5, Win7,8 cores, 16gb ram)
Cheers
Hi Steve, I just tried it on 1200 effects and it did take about 20 mins . There should be a readout in the Info panel with the % complete, or a progress bar on the script panel. If the progress keeps increasing, we know at least it isn’t a bug that caused the script to hang.
I agree this isn’t great. The slowness is probably due to updating the list in the script panel rather than actually turning the effects on/off. I’m not sure I optimised EffectSearch as much as ExpressEdit for these large amounts, so I’ll look into whether I can make it more efficient.
Searching for layer styles would be a nice addition.
This might fall outside the scope of this plug-in, but any way to globally turn off and/or delete all masks?
It is outside the scope of this script, which is for managing effects not masks. A script that simply turned off or deleted all masks wouldn’t be a hard to write. It’s the kind of thing I’d recommend requesting over on aenhancers.com. But something that listed all masks in the way EffectSearch does would take considerably more effort.
Before doing a Collect File, could I use this to find any Effects that are turned off (“
Yes. Just search for effects that are off, then from the Action menu choose Select All, then Delete Effects.
Hi. How much will cost license per 40 computers?
Thanks