A rigged Templater project can remember where its data, its footage and its output belong, so the next person to open it clicks one button instead of re-entering three paths. The button is Save, the follow-up is Load from Project, and the whole idea is old enough that it appears in the very first Templater 2 release notes. This guide explains what gets stored, how to set up each of the three locations so the stored values are worth keeping, and where the feature stops.
The short version of the steps is simple. You fill in the Batch Assets group in the Templater panel, you click Save, and the references travel inside the After Effects project file. The longer version is about the three locations themselves, because a saved reference to a badly organized folder only preserves the problem. So we will cover the feature first and then spend most of the page on the folders.
What Save stores, and why it saves you a morning
The Templater panel has a group called Batch Assets. It holds three fields: a Data source, a Footage folder and an Output folder. Those three fields answer the three questions every batch asks. Where is the spreadsheet or JSON file that holds the rows? Where are the photos, clips and music the rows point at? Where should the finished files go?
Our documentation describes the saving feature as project file presets. Here is the procedure exactly as the help page gives it. Open your After Effects project. In the Batch Assets group of the Templater panel, enter a Data Source, a Footage Folder and an Output Folder. Click Save. The next time you open the project, click the Load from Project button in the Batch Assets group, and your previously selected references load automatically. That is the entire mechanism. The help page says the purpose is to speed up working with a template that has already been rigged and opened in After Effects, and that is a fair description of what you get.
Why does it matter? Think about what a rigged template is. Somebody spent real time deciding which layers are dynamic, mapping column names to layers, and setting rules for how text and footage behave. That work lives in the project file. The three locations are the other half of the setup, and without Save they live in somebody’s memory or in a chat message that says “the footage is on the shared drive, I think.” When the locations ride along inside the project, the file carries its own setup instructions. A teammate who inherits the project does not need to guess. A producer who comes back to a template after a few weeks does not have to reconstruct which spreadsheet it was linked to.
There is a second reason, and it concerns the order of the work. Our Getting Started page lays out the basic workflow as a sequence. Set up the After Effects project and apply the Templater Settings effect to the layers that should be dynamic. Set a footage folder and an output destination folder. Set up a data source and link it to the project. Then click Save to store the batch assets references in the project file. After that come Preview, and then Render or Replicate. The page says that when you open the project again, everything will be set up and waiting for you. Save sits between setup and the first preview. It is the step that turns a one-time configuration into something the file keeps.
Save & Reload Setup
How to make a project open ready
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Set up the After Effects projectApply the Templater Settings effect to the layers that should be dynamic.
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Set the three Batch Assets fieldsEnter a Data Source, a Footage Folder and an Output Folder in the Batch Assets group of the Templater panel.
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Click SaveThe references travel inside the After Effects project file as project file presets.
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Click Load from Project on reopenYour previously selected data source, footage folder and output folder references load automatically.
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Preview a row or twoA preview shows how your data will be processed, the cheapest moment to find a footage path that does not resolve.
This feature is not new. The Templater 2.0.0 release notes, dated October 14, 2015, list it as “Project-specific presets: Save Batch Assets information within the project file to quickly open and link a pre-existing project.” The same release lists “Switching between AE project templates: Use the same spreadsheet to hold data for multiple AE projects.” Read together, those two lines describe a workflow where one spreadsheet can serve several templates and each template remembers its own folders. We mention the history for one practical reason. The procedure has been in the product since the start of the Templater 2 line, so it is a safe habit to build a team routine around.
One limit belongs here. Our help pages describe what Save stores and how Load from Project restores it. They do not describe what happens when a saved path no longer exists, for example after a drive is renamed or a folder is moved. We will not guess at the behavior. If a project opens on a machine where the folders sit somewhere else, treat the loaded values as a starting point, look at each field, and correct any path that does not match the new machine. The link icons we describe later make that check quick.
Setting up the three locations so the saved values are worth keeping
Save preserves whatever you entered. If the footage folder is a tangle, you now have a saved tangle. So it is worth doing the folders properly before you click the button. Each location has its own rules in our documentation, and each rule has a reason behind it.
The footage folder
Our help page on setting up a footage folder asks for a single folder, anywhere on your machine’s drive or local network, for each After Effects project configured for Templater. Inside that single folder you create subfolders for audio, images and video and sort the assets into them. Then, back in After Effects, you type the path to that one folder into the Footage folder field under Batch Assets, or you use the button with the three dots to choose it.
The reason for a single folder is the rule that comes next. The documentation says that when you reference footage files in your data source, those file paths must be relative to the path in the Footage folder field. A cell does not say “D:\Campaigns\Spring\images\logo.png”. It says “images/logo.png”, and Templater combines that with the footage folder. This is what makes the whole arrangement portable. The data source stays short, and the one saved path decides where the relative references resolve. If you move the footage to another drive, you change one field rather than editing every row.
Our concepts page on source footage location adds the rest of the picture. Local footage should exist within a single folder. That folder holds the digital photo, video and music files that Templater imports into your After Effects project as it works. When Templater meets a path to a local file, it imports the file. When it meets a URL for a cloud-based resource, it downloads the file into a folder that it creates automatically, named [TEMPLATER DOWNLOADS], and that folder is placed inside the footage source directory you set in the panel. So even a project that pulls remote assets depends on the footage folder field. It is the anchor for both kinds of footage.
Two details from that page are worth knowing. First, After Effects may require some user interaction for specific file types that Templater imports on the fly, and Camera Raw files are the example the page gives. If a batch includes that kind of file, expect that you may have to be present. Second, as of version 2.9.6, Templater supports image sequences for dynamic footage layers. You prefix the sequence’s file name with a hash symbol in the data source. The page’s example is a sub-folder inside the footage location that holds /ads/ad1_loop_0000.png, referenced in the data as #/ads/ad1_loop_0000.png. When Templater imports a sequence, it sets the frame rate to match the layer source it is mapped to. If your template uses sequences, the sub-folder structure inside your single footage folder carries real meaning, so name it with care before you save the reference.
For everything about footage that has gone missing or lives in the cloud, we have separate guides. Our article on handling missing footage and remote footage in Templater covers what happens when a reference breaks, and our piece on managing linked footage and dynamic assets when a project renders on another Mac covers moving a project between machines. This page stays on the saved reference itself, which is a different job. A saved reference tells Templater where to look. It does not repair a file that is not there.
The output folder
The help page on setting an output folder is short and contains the one warning that matters. Create a folder on your local drive or network. Do not use a cloud-based sync folder for Templater output, because that can result in errors when you use Adobe Media Encoder as your render engine. Use a local or networked folder instead. Then, in the Batch Assets group, type the path into the Output folder field or use the three-dot button to select it.
Notice what the warning ties the problem to. The page names Adobe Media Encoder specifically. It does not say a sync folder fails every time or with every render path, so we will not either. What it says is that a sync folder can cause errors when Adobe Media Encoder is the render engine. That is enough to act on. If you want the finished files to reach a shared cloud location, render to a plain local or network folder first and let something else move them afterward.
What lands in that folder? The help page says it stores your rendered digital media files, or copies of versioned After Effects project files if you are using Adobe Media Encoder to render. Our concepts page on output location and assets adds that Templater creates output when it processes your data source together with your project file, that output assets are either auto-generated compositions or rendered media files, and that files are written to the location in the Output Folder field. Auto-generated compositions go into sub-folders of a parent folder named [TEMPLATER COMPS], which also appears in the project panel when you generate comps. You can also send those compositions to Adobe Media Encoder for more nuanced rendering tasks.
The release notes add two facts about how Templater treats this folder. Version 2.1.10, dated May 2, 2016, changed batch processing so that Templater no longer deletes the output in the specified output location before a batch begins. It overwrites existing files that have the same name as the new output filename. That has a plain consequence for your saved folder. If you save a project that points at last month’s output folder and run a new batch with the same file names, the new files replace the old ones. If you want to keep both, give each run its own folder, or change the names. Version 2.1.4, dated January 11, 2016, added that a missing output directory is created automatically when you use the command line interface with Templater Bot, and that you can use sub-directories in the output column of the data source to organize results. Those notes describe the command line and the data source, so they are context here and not part of the panel procedure.
A caution about reading old release notes. They describe the product as it was at that date. Where a newer release changed the behavior, the newer note wins, and the current help pages are the first place to check. We cite the dates so you can tell which change came when, not so you can rely on a decade-old line as today’s rule.
The data source
The third field is the one this guide treats most lightly, because our documentation devotes separate pages to each type. The data source can be a Google Sheets document, a tab-separated file, a JSON file, or a Dataclay Que campaign, and each has its own setup page. What matters for Save is simple. Whatever you linked in the panel is what gets stored. The help page on setting up an After Effects project for use with Templater reminds you to decide which layers receive data, to map them, and, if you plan to use the Flags feature to swap the sources of composition layers, to note the project composition names for the data source. Those are template decisions. The saved reference is only the pointer to the data that fills them.
A walkthrough, and what to check after Load from Project
Here is a hypothetical example, labeled as one, so you can see the sequence in order. Imagine a producer preparing a template called spring-promo for a small team. She creates one folder for the project and puts three sub-folders in it for audio, images and video. She drops the music bed, the product photos and the clips into the right places. She opens the rigged project and types the path to that single folder into the Footage folder field. She makes a separate folder on a local drive for finished files and enters it as the Output folder. She links the spreadsheet as the Data source and writes the footage cells as relative paths such as images/product-01.png. She clicks Preview to confirm that a few rows behave, and then she clicks Save.
Two weeks later a teammate opens the same project. He sees the rigged composition and an empty-looking set of Batch Assets fields. He clicks Load from Project. The three references appear. He now has the data source, the footage folder and the output folder the producer chose, without a single message to her. That is the scenario the feature exists for. Nothing in the example is a measurement or a benchmark. It is a way of picturing the order of events.
Now the checks. We suggest them as general practice and not as steps from the help page, and we are saying so plainly. After Load from Project, look at each of the three fields. Confirm the path in the footage field is the one you expect on this machine. Confirm the output folder exists and is not inside a cloud sync location. Then use the link icons. Both the footage page and the output page in our documentation say that any time you want to reach Templater’s resource locations quickly, you can click the link icons to the left of the Data, Footage and Destination fields. Clicking them opens the location in the application that goes with it. The version history notes that the buttons to open the data, footage and output locations from the main panel arrived in Templater 2.9.0, dated February 25, 2019. If a link icon opens the wrong folder, you have found the problem before a batch has started.
A last check is the one that protects the batch. Preview a row or two. Our Getting Started page puts Preview right after Save for a reason. A preview shows how your data will be processed, and that is the cheapest moment to find a footage path that does not resolve. Later releases added more help here. The Templater 3.8.0 notes, dated April 30, 2026, list a feature to validate footage sources before batch execution and a preference to halt batches on a missing project file. The changelog gives one line for each, so we will not describe how they work. If you run large batches, read the current help pages for those features. They sit one step downstream of the saved references on this page, and they catch problems that a saved path cannot.
After Load from Project
Check these four things before starting a batch
- Confirm the footage folder path is the one you expect on this machine.
- Confirm the output folder exists and is not inside a cloud sync location.
- Click the link icons to the left of the Data, Footage and Destination fields to open each location and verify it.
- Preview a row or two to catch any footage path that does not resolve.
There is one more point about project files. This one is our inference from the references living inside the file, not a documented behavior. They travel with a copy, so if you duplicate the project to make a variant, the duplicate carries the same references until you change them and save again. That is useful when two variants share a footage folder. It is a trap when the second variant should write somewhere different, because it will write into the first one’s output folder if nobody edits the field. After you duplicate a template, open the Batch Assets group, change what needs changing, and save once more.
Where this feature is the wrong tool
Saving references solves a narrow problem. It makes one project file remember three paths. It is the wrong answer to several nearby problems, and we would rather say so than let the button take credit for work it does not do.
It does not make a template safe to hand over. A project can load all three references correctly and still fail because a font is missing or an effect is not installed. The help page on switching between project files inside JSON makes the point from the other side. It says projects must open without error, and that missing fonts or missing effects might halt Templater’s processes. Our guide to setting up an After Effects template so a teammate can update it goes into the handover in full.
It does not decide how a batch is rendered. Whether you replicate compositions into the After Effects render queue, send them to Adobe Media Encoder, or render directly is a separate choice. Our comparison of render or replicate and our piece on where Adobe Media Encoder’s queue differs from Templater’s queue cover that ground. The saved output folder matters to all of those modes, but the saved folder is only where results land.
It does not replace a plan for many machines. The docs we have describe references stored in the project file for a project open in After Effects. They do not describe a shared configuration across several workstations. If your pipeline spreads jobs over multiple computers, read about Que and its satellites, and treat the saved references as a per-project convenience.
And it is not for people who want to avoid thinking about folders. The feature is only as good as the three locations behind it. A tidy single footage folder with relative paths, an output folder outside any sync service, and a data source the whole team can reach are the foundation. Save writes those choices down. For the broader habits that keep a large batch alive, our guide to After Effects templates for batch rendering is the place to continue, and you can read about the product itself on the Templater page.
The bottom line is short. Set up one footage folder with relative paths, put the output on a local or network folder that is not a cloud sync folder, link your data source, click Save, and use Load from Project when you come back. Then check the three fields and preview a row before you start a batch. That small routine turns a rigged project into one that opens ready, and it costs you a minute after each change.
We have tried to keep to what our own documentation states, so a few questions below end with “check the current help page.” That is deliberate. Where the docs are silent, we would rather tell you so than fill the gap with a guess.
Questions about a specific setup are welcome through our support channels. Bring the three paths you entered and the platform you are on, and we can look at the same fields you are looking at.
Before you go, here are the questions that come up most naturally once you have read this far. Each answer sticks to what the documentation says.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly does the Save button store in a Templater project?
It stores three references from the Batch Assets group in the Templater panel: the Data source, the Footage folder and the Output folder. They are kept in the After Effects project file as project file presets. Our help page describes the goal as speeding up work with a template that has already been rigged and opened. It does not say Save stores anything else, so do not expect it to hold rendering choices or other preferences.
How do I bring the saved folders back when I reopen the project?
Open the project, find the Batch Assets group in the Templater panel, and click Load from Project. Your previously selected data source, footage folder and output folder references load automatically. After loading, look at each field and confirm the paths match the machine you are on. The help pages do not describe what happens if a saved folder has since been moved, so verify before you run a batch.
Can I point the output folder at a cloud sync folder?
Our documentation warns against it. It says using a cloud-based sync folder for Templater output can result in errors when you use Adobe Media Encoder as your render engine, and it tells you to use a local or networked folder instead. The warning names Adobe Media Encoder, so we do not claim more than that. Render to a plain folder and move the finished files to your cloud location afterward.
How should footage paths in my data source be written?
Relative to the path in the Footage folder field. Our help page says that when you reference footage files in your data source, those file paths must be relative to the path specified in that field. A cell would read images/logo.png and not a full drive path. Keep one footage folder per project with sub-folders for audio, images and video, as the page recommends.
Does a saved footage reference work for cloud-hosted footage too?
The footage folder still matters. Our documentation says that when Templater meets a URL for a cloud-based resource, it downloads the file into an automatically created folder named [TEMPLATER DOWNLOADS], placed inside the footage source directory you set in the panel. So the saved footage folder is where those downloads go. For the setup details, including Google Drive requirements, read the separate remote footage pages.
Will a new batch overwrite files that are already in my output folder?
The Templater 2.1.10 release notes, dated May 2, 2016, say Templater no longer deletes the output in a specified output location before a batch begins. Instead it overwrites existing files that have the same name as the new output filename. Files with different names are left alone. If you need to keep an earlier run, use a different folder or different output names.
Is there a quick way to open the folders Templater is using?
Yes. Click the link icons to the left of the Data, Footage and Destination fields in the Templater panel. Each one opens its location in the application that goes with it. Our release notes list the buttons to open data, footage and output locations from the main panel under Templater 2.9.0, dated February 25, 2019.
