Missing footage stops a Templater batch only if you let it. Templater has one setting, with five options, that decides what happens the moment a footage reference in your data points at nothing, and the right choice for a large batch is to let a branded placeholder stand in so the run keeps going.
That sounds small. It is the difference between a batch that finishes overnight with a handful of rows to fix in the morning and a batch that sits on a dialog box at row nine while everyone is asleep. This article walks through the setting, the five options behind it, and the two things that keep references from breaking in the first place: a tidy footage folder and a clear plan for any media that lives in Google Drive. We will say where each approach is a poor fit, because a few of them are.
What Templater does when a footage reference breaks
Every row in your data source can point at footage. A column might hold the name of a photo, a logo, a music bed or a clip, and Templater imports the file named in that cell when it builds the version for that row. Sooner or later a cell will name something Templater cannot find or cannot import. Someone typed the file name wrong. The file was renamed after the spreadsheet was filled in. The cell is blank because the person who owned that row never got around to it.
You decide what Templater does about that in the Templater panel. Click Preferences to open Templater Preferences, then look in the Footage group. Two controls matter there. One is a checkbox labeled Consider empty cells or null values as faulty. The other is a drop-down menu that begins “When Templater cannot find or import referenced footage…” and offers five ways to respond.
Start with the checkbox, because it changes what counts as a problem. When it is ticked, any null, faulty or empty value in the data source gets the same treatment you pick in the drop-down. A blank cell is handled exactly like a misspelled file name. When it is switched off, an empty cell behaves differently. Templater holds over items from the previously previewed row. The footage layer stays untouched until you enter a reference. In practice that means a row with a blank footage cell can quietly keep the footage left over from the previously previewed row.
So which setting is right? It depends on whether a blank is a mistake or a choice. If every row is supposed to have an image, tick the box, because a blank cell is a data error and you want it treated like one. If some rows legitimately have no footage and the layer should just stay as the template left it, think carefully before ticking it. You would be telling Templater to treat a deliberate blank as a failure, and the drop-down choice you make next would then fire for those rows too.
Now the drop-down. The five options are worth taking one at a time, since each one fits a different kind of job.
Ask me what to do. Templater halts processing and shows a dialog listing the other options. This is the right mode when you are sitting at the machine, previewing a few rows, and want to decide case by case. It is the wrong mode for an unattended batch.
Let me find the footage asset. Templater opens your operating system’s default file browser so you can pick a replacement footage source by hand. That is useful when you know the file exists and the data simply points at the wrong place. Like the first option, it needs a person in the chair.
Skip the row. Templater skips the entire row that contains the missing footage. It will not version that row at all, and it moves directly to the data in the next row. This is the cleanest answer when a video with the wrong picture is worse than no video. Think of a personalized message that must show the right person’s photo. A placeholder would be a mistake there, because the output would look finished and be wrong. Skipping leaves a visible gap in your output folder, and a gap is easy to count and fix.
Use my branded placeholder. Templater replaces the missing footage with a file that you point it to in the Placeholder for missing visual footage field or the Placeholder for missing audio footage field. This is the option our documentation recommends, because it ensures the smooth operation of batch processing. The batch keeps running and every row can still produce a video. The trade-off is the one just described. A row with a placeholder in it can look complete. You need a way to find those rows afterward, and we come back to that below.
Cancel the process. Templater stops and cancels the versioning process. Reserve this for the case where any missing file means something upstream is badly broken and you would rather start over than continue.
The defaults, and where the placeholders live
If you installed Templater 2.9.5 or later, you already have placeholders. Those versions install default branded placeholder files on your local machine, and they set the default footage handling option to Use my branded placeholder. On macOS the default location for the files is /Applications/Dataclay. On Windows it is C:\Users\Public\Documents\Dataclay.
Two practical points follow from that. First, a fresh installation will not stop and ask you about missing footage. It will substitute a placeholder and continue, so a first batch can finish without any complaint even though some rows used stand-ins. Second, you can point the placeholder fields at your own file instead of the defaults. The point of the option’s name is the word “branded”. We suggest a file that a viewer or a reviewer will recognize at a glance as a stand-in. A plain gray frame with the word “MISSING” on it does the job. So does a clearly marked version of the client’s logo. A placeholder that looks like real content defeats the purpose.
A worked example
Picture a team producing a set of product videos from a spreadsheet. Each row has a product name, a price field, and the name of an image file. The spreadsheet was assembled by three people over two weeks. Several image names have typos, and a few cells are empty because the product photos had not arrived yet.
With the checkbox ticked and the drop-down set to Use my branded placeholder, the team starts the batch and leaves for the day. Every row produces a video. The rows with typos and blanks show the team’s clearly marked placeholder image in the footage layer. The next morning, the team scans the output, finds every video showing the placeholder, corrects the matching spreadsheet cells and re-runs just those rows. Nothing waited on a dialog and nothing shipped with a wrong photo, because the placeholder is obviously not a photo.
Now change one setting. With the drop-down set to Skip the row, the same batch skips the damaged rows. The output folder has fewer videos than the spreadsheet has rows, and the difference is the to-do list. That works well when a counted shortfall is easy to audit. It works poorly when the person receiving the batch does not know to count.
For the broader question of what to do when the data itself is the problem, our piece on handling dirty or incomplete data without producing broken output videos covers the ground beyond footage. If a batch has already stopped partway, what happens when a Templater batch fails mid-queue explains what to expect.
Prevent the problem with a footage folder that stays put
Most missing-footage trouble begins with files that move. The cure is boring and effective: give every project one home for its media and refer to files by their position inside that home.
Our documentation lays out the steps. Create a single folder for each After Effects project you have configured for Templater. It can sit anywhere on the machine’s drive or on your local network. Inside that folder, make subfolders for audio, images and video, then sort your assets into them. These folders hold the photos, video files and music that Templater will import into the project.
Next, tell Templater where the folder is. Back in After Effects, open the Templater panel and look under Batch Assets. Type the path to your assets folder into the Footage folder field, or click the … button and browse to it.
Here is the rule that matters most, and the one most often forgotten. When your data source refers to a footage file, the path has to be relative to the path in the Footage folder field. If the Footage folder field points at your project’s assets folder, a cell reading images/boots.jpg means the file named boots.jpg inside the images subfolder of that folder. A full path from the root of the drive is the wrong thing to put in the cell. Relative paths are the reason a project can move between machines. Change the Footage folder field on the new machine, and every reference in the spreadsheet still resolves, because none of them ever mentioned where the folder sat.
That last point deserves a moment. If you hand a project to a colleague or move it to a render machine, you update one field rather than editing a thousand cells. Our article on managing linked footage and dynamic assets when a project renders on another Mac goes deeper on that handoff.
One small convenience is easy to miss. Next to the Data, Footage and Destination fields in the Templater panel there are link icons. Click one and the matching location opens in its corresponding application. When a row fails and you are not sure whether the file is where you think it is, the Footage link icon takes you to the folder Templater is actually using.
The folder approach has a limit. It assumes the media sits on a drive the render machine can reach, either the machine’s own disk or something on your local network. If your assets live in the cloud, you need one of the Google Drive methods below. If you want the full picture of how footage can be fetched from a web address, see our post on tapping remote footage with smart URL processing.
Remote footage from Google Drive: three methods, three trade-offs
Many teams keep their media in Google Drive, and our documentation describes three ways to use those files as remote footage in Templater. You can use the Media Connector for Google Drive, you can sync Drive to the render machine with Google Drive for desktop, or you can authorize individual files through Templater’s Google File Picker. The third is deprecated.
Before choosing, two facts help. You can use footage from Google Drive no matter which data source you use. You are not limited to Google Sheets, and you can mix local footage references with Drive URLs in the same data. And the account you use to log in to Google Sheets does not have to be the same account you use to reach Drive.
The difference between the methods comes down to how a cell in your data names the file. The Media Connector and the File Picker let you use share links or direct download links as footage references. Google Drive for desktop mounts a virtual drive, so your data holds ordinary file paths relative to the Footage folder, exactly as in the previous section.
The Media Connector for Google Drive
There is a history behind this one. In Templater 3.7 we released a new File Picker workflow for connecting to Google Sheets, to comply with Google’s updated security guidelines for third-party applications. That change moved Templater from a scheme that required full access to all of a user’s Drive files to one where you choose the individual files Templater may read and modify. A side effect followed. Because Templater no longer has access to everything in an authorized Drive, it can no longer automatically use remote footage links to media files in that account. For Templater 3.7.2 and newer, we created the Media Connector to restore account-wide access to media files stored in Drive.
What you get is access to every file your Google Account can open, whether the file is private or public and whether you own it or someone shared it with you. The access is read-only. That is a security improvement, since it shifts control from our Google Sheets integration to your own Google infrastructure.
What it costs you is setup time. Our documentation calls the process “a bit more involved”, and that is fair. In outline, you create a new project on Google Cloud Platform, which should not incur any costs. You enable the Google Drive API for that project. You configure a consent screen, choosing the Internal audience if you belong to a Google Workspace and External otherwise. You create an OAuth client of the Desktop app type, which gives you a Client ID and a Client secret. You add three scopes, two for basic account information and one read-only scope for Drive files. If your app is External, you add your own email address as a test user.
Two warnings in that process are worth repeating. First, the Client secret is shown once. You cannot see it again after you close the dialog that displays it, so record it somewhere safe or download the JSON file and store that securely. Treat the credentials as you would a password that allows full read access to the contents of your Drive. If you lose them or suspect they are compromised, delete the existing credentials, create new ones and re-authorize the Media Connector in Templater. Second, do not submit the project for review as an In Production application. Production apps are meant for developers sharing software with the general public and face intense security auditing that Templater does not need. An app for your own use, or for use inside an organization, can stay Internal or External in Testing indefinitely.
Once the Google side is ready, connect Templater. Open After Effects and the Templater panel, click Preferences, choose the Footage tab and click Media Connector for Google Drive. Enter your Client ID and Client secret and click Sign In. Your default browser opens a Google login page. If you created the app with an External audience, Google will say it has not verified the app, which is expected here. Accept the first authorization page for the basic scopes, then allow access to your Drive files on the second. Return to the Media Connector dialog and click Authorize. When it works, the dialog says Connected to Google Drive followed by your email address.
If something goes wrong, the usual cause is the wrong account. For an Internal app that returns an Access blocked message, confirm you are signed into the correct Google Account and try again. If your browser holds several signed-in accounts, sign out of all of them and sign in to the right one. If you use browser profiles, make sure the window with the correct profile was the last one you selected, so Templater’s sign-in page opens there.
The advantages are real: full Drive access, access control kept inside your organization, and only the requested files are downloaded. A single Google Cloud project can serve multiple users under the same domain’s organization, so one person can do the setup for a whole team. The disadvantages are just as real. The setup is lengthy and advanced. Apps made with non-Workspace Google Accounts require re-authorization every seven days, which is a poor fit for a machine that runs unattended for weeks. Some large files might not download correctly. And fetching big media files can be slower than reading them from a local disk.
On the large-file problem, our documentation gives a specific symptom. Sometimes the downloaded file is not the media at all. It is an HTML text file saying that Drive was unable to scan for viruses. If you see that, try providing a direct download link in place of the share link.
Google Drive for desktop
The second method is much easier. The Google Drive for desktop app syncs media to the machine that runs Templater and presents Drive as a virtual drive built into the operating system. It works for personal and Workspace My Drive folders as well as Workspace Shared Drives.
Because the files appear to sit on a local drive, your data uses file names and relative paths, not share links. Our documentation lists it as easy to set up. You can be connected to several Drive accounts at once, you can reach whole folders and their contents, and no special permissions are needed.
There is one trap, and it catches people. The Drive app can stream files or mirror them. Streaming keeps a small placeholder and downloads the real file when something opens it. After Effects does not know it has to wait for that download, so if Templater tries to import an asset that has not synced, you get an error. Mirroring stores a copy locally. Our guidance is direct: every Drive folder and file that Templater needs should have the Available offline option enabled.
Be selective about what you mirror. If your Drive holds a large number of files, we do not recommend mirroring the entire account, since that eats local storage. Choose only the folders you need. And be careful about timing. If you are adding large footage files to a synced folder while a job runs, or your internet connection is weak or slow, the sync may lag. After Effects can then report errors about corrupted footage. The same errors appear whenever a needed file is not set to Available offline. The simple discipline is to confirm that everything is mirrored before you start any job that references Drive-based footage.
The disadvantages follow from that. All files have to be pre-downloaded onto the machine running Templater, because unsynced and partially synced files cause footage corruption errors. And the mirrored files take up space on the local drive.
The File Picker, and why we steer people away from it
The third method is the Google File Picker. You launch it from the same Google Spreadsheet Setup dialog you use for Sheets, under Grant Access to Specific Sheets, by clicking Launch File Picker for Google Drive. It requires no extra configuration, and it is limited to the Google Account currently logged into Templater.
We consider it deprecated, and we do not recommend it. Google Drive API limitations mean access permissions are not inherited from a parent folder, so every single file must be authorized explicitly. It continues to work because it is tied to the way Templater connects to Google Sheets, but the Media Connector was built to replace it. If you use it at all, expect to select each file by hand. For background on the Sheets side, see our complete reference on using Templater with Google Sheets.
Choosing between them
If you are one person on a personal Google account with a modest amount of media and you want to be rendering today, Google Drive for desktop is the practical choice. Mirror the folders you need and mark them Available offline. If you work in a Workspace, want links in your spreadsheet, and have someone willing to do a one-time cloud project setup, the Media Connector scales better and keeps access control with your organization. If the machine runs unattended and your Google account is personal, remember the seven-day re-authorization before you trust the Media Connector with an overnight run. Local media in a footage folder avoids the download wait that our documentation notes for the Media Connector, so when the files can live on the render machine or a network drive, keep them there.
The bottom line
Set the missing-footage option before you need it. For an unattended batch, Use my branded placeholder is the choice we recommend, with your own clearly marked placeholder file so stand-ins are easy to spot. For work where a wrong picture is worse than no video, Skip the row, and count your output. Keep one footage folder per project and write relative paths in your data so the project can move. For Google Drive, pick Google Drive for desktop for simplicity and the Media Connector for organization-wide control, and treat the File Picker as a last resort.
The one thing to remember is that a batch that finishes with a few flagged rows is a better outcome than a batch that stops. Decide in advance what a missing file should do, and let Templater do it. For the wider workflow around a project, the Templater page is a good place to start.
Questions about this setup come up often, so we collected the ones we hear most.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the safest missing-footage setting for an overnight batch?
Use my branded placeholder. Our documentation recommends it because it ensures the smooth operation of batch processing, so the run does not stop on a dialog while nobody is watching. Point the placeholder fields at a file that is obviously a stand-in, then check the finished videos for it in the morning. If a wrong picture is worse than no video for your project, choose Skip the row instead and compare the number of outputs to the number of rows.
Why does a row with a blank footage cell show the previous row’s image?
When the Consider empty cells or null values as faulty checkbox is off, an empty cell causes Templater to hold over items from the previously previewed row. The footage layer stays untouched until you enter a reference. Tick the checkbox in the Footage group of Templater Preferences if blanks in your data are mistakes. Then Templater applies your chosen missing-footage option to them instead of carrying the old image forward.
Where are the default placeholder files installed?
Templater 2.9.5 and later installs default branded placeholder files on your local machine and sets Use my branded placeholder as the default handling option. On macOS they are in /Applications/Dataclay. On Windows they are in C:\Users\Public\Documents\Dataclay. You can point the placeholder fields for visual and audio footage at your own files instead, which we suggest so that a stand-in is easy to recognize.
Do the file paths in my spreadsheet need to be full paths?
No. File paths in your data source must be relative to the path set in the Footage folder field, which you find under Batch Assets in the Templater panel. That way the project still works after you move it to another machine, because you only change the Footage folder field. Organize the folder with subfolders for audio, images and video so the relative paths stay short and readable.
Can I use Google Drive footage if my data is not in Google Sheets?
Yes. You can use footage from Google Drive with any data source, and you can mix local footage references with Drive URLs in the same data. The Media Connector and the File Picker let you use share links or direct download links. Google Drive for desktop works differently, because it mounts a virtual drive and your data uses file paths relative to the Footage folder.
Why do I get corrupted footage errors with Google Drive for desktop?
Usually the files were not fully synced to the machine. If a folder is set to stream and Templater tries to import a file that has not downloaded, After Effects does not wait for the download and reports an error. Enable Available offline for every folder and file Templater needs, and confirm everything has mirrored before you start a job. A weak or slow connection, or large files still being added, can also cause the same errors.
A large Drive file downloaded as an HTML file. What happened?
For very large files, Templater sometimes cannot download the media correctly. The downloaded file is an HTML text file that says Drive was unable to scan for viruses. Try providing a direct download link in your data in place of the share link. This applies to the Media Connector and the File Picker methods, which both accept links as footage references.
