Most of Templater’s settings live in one dialog, and that dialog is organized by category. Data Source, Spot Checks, Previewing, Replication, Footage, Text, the target composition, Bot, Generative AI and Advanced each get their own page of options, and the Licensing view sits one click away. If you know which category owns the behavior you want to change, you can find it in seconds.
This guide is a map, not a manual. For every category it says what the category controls, which options matter most, and when you would touch them at all. Where one of our other guides covers a category in depth, we point to it and stop. Everything here comes from our help documentation for Templater 3, and where a setting needs a particular version, we say which one.
Opening Preferences and what sits beside the categories
Open After Effects, find the Templater panel and click Preferences. If you cannot see the panel, click Window in the After Effects menu and select Templater 3.jsxbin. If you want the panel to open with every project, our docs suggest docking it. Click and hold the word Templater in the upper left corner of the panel, then drag it to where you want it in your workspace.
The first time you open Preferences, it lands on the Data Source category. In Templater 3.4 or later, the dialog remembers the category you last configured and opens on that one the next time you use Preferences during your work session. That small detail saves clicks when you are bouncing between two categories while you test a project. Our screenshots and docs show the dialog from 3.4 and later. If you run an earlier version, the dialog looks different, but according to the docs the options are the same except where a specific note says otherwise.
Three things sit at the edge of the dialog rather than inside a category.
- The Information icon (i) at the bottom shows Templater’s End User License Agreement, the version number and the build number. Reach for it when someone asks which build you are on, or when you open a support conversation.
- The Help icon (?) opens the online help for Templater.
- Licensing is its own view. Click Licensing, then License Info, to see activation data for your active license. From there you can activate, deactivate or reactivate a license, list activations and see information for a license key, or purchase a license. That last option is there for people using a free trial version.
Opening Preferences
How to open Templater Preferences
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Open After EffectsFind the Templater panel and click Preferences.
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Show the panel if hiddenClick Window in the After Effects menu and select Templater 3.jsxbin.
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Dock the panelClick and hold the word Templater in the upper left corner of the panel, then drag it to where you want it in your workspace.
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Check your versionIn Templater 3.4 or later, the dialog remembers the category you last configured.
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Find build infoThe Information icon (i) at the bottom shows the version number and the build number.
Licensing deserves a sentence of context, because it is the one part of this dialog that is about your account rather than your project. If you are moving Templater to a different machine, or you are not sure whether a seat is still active, this is the screen. Our guide to activating and deactivating Templater goes into the steps, including offline and command line cases.
The categories that decide where data comes from and what you can check
Data Source
This category controls how Templater reads rows. It has two checkboxes and two buttons, and a wrong setting on the first checkbox can garble your text. Our documentation spells out the rule. Leave the first checkbox enabled if your data source is a tab delimited file exported from Excel or Numbers. Disable it if your data source is QUE, a local or remote JSON file, or a local TSV file exported from Google Sheets. The command line equivalent is the tsv_from_excel key, and the property reference tells you what to do if text layers show unexpected results: change this setting and see if it fixes the issue.
Data Source Setting
When to enable or disable the first Data Source checkbox
- Data source type
- Enable the checkboxTab delimited file from Excel or Numbers
- Disable the checkboxQUE, local or remote JSON, or TSV from Google Sheets
- Command line key
- Enable the checkboxtsv_from_excel set accordingly
- Disable the checkboxtsv_from_excel set accordingly
- What goes wrong
- Enable the checkboxText layers show unexpected results
- Disable the checkboxText layers show unexpected results
Change this setting and see if it fixes the issue.
Before You Change Settings
Questions to answer before changing any Preference
- Check which data source type you use: Excel/Numbers TSV, Google Sheets TSV, JSON, or QUE
- Decide whether a missing image should stop the batch or ship with a placeholder
- Confirm how you render: After Effects render queue or Adobe Media Encoder
- Confirm which version of Templater you are running before enabling version-specific features
- Change one setting at a time when something behaves oddly
The second checkbox is labeled Import Templater data as JSON footage. It imports the current job’s JSON as a footage layer so the data can be used in expressions. Our docs call it an experimental feature that should only be enabled by experienced users, and the property reference adds a warning. If the structure of the imported JSON changes from job to job, an error dialog appears and needs someone to dismiss it. That is a bad fit for unattended batches. Leave it off unless you are writing expressions that read the job data.
If your feed is remote JSON, the Remote JSON Configuration button lets you enter a username and password for “Basic Authentication”, plus optional request headers. If you use QUE, the QUE Configuration button lets you add your machine as a QUE satellite. That button is disabled when you are not logged in to QUE, and QUE requires Templater 3.0 or later. When the button looks dead, check the login first. For the QUE side of the story, see what a QUE satellite is and how to add one, and for the choice of data source itself, what a data source is in Templater.
Spot Checks
Spot checks give you still images for each video so you can verify that your data looks the way you want before you commit to the full batch. The feature requires Templater Pro or Bot edition, version 3.0 or later. The category holds a Load Settings and Module Templates button, the Render Settings and Output Module dropdowns, a field for how many frames to sample when a composition has no markers, and two checkboxes for creating spot checks when rendering or replicating.
Our docs make three points worth repeating. First, you must click the Load button before the dropdowns contain anything. Second, Dataclay ships its own render settings and output module templates, and you load them from the After Effects Edit, Templates menu. Third, the sampling field is a back-up. Templater spreads sampled frames across the whole composition, so you may or may not see the information you need. Markers are the better tool. We wrote a full guide on preview modes and spot checks. We do not repeat that here, and we leave the choice of render settings and output module templates to our docs.
Previewing
Previewing settings standardize how you look at versioned compositions before a render. There are four options. The first is a number, Wait at least ___ seconds between preview cycles. The second, Clear cache on preview, is a checkbox. The third, Bring target comp into focus viewer when previewing Time Sculpting, is available in Templater 3.4 or later and requires Time Sculpting, which needs Templater 3.0 or later. When it is on, Templater brings the specified target composition into focus each time you click a transport preview button, and it forces the timeline to zoom out so you can see the entire duration. Our docs say not to enable it if you do not have or are not using Time Sculpting. The fourth, Highlight most recently previewed row in Google Sheets, needs Templater 3.7 or later.
Replication
Replication settings control how Templater creates versioned replica compositions from your target comp and your data, and what happens to the replicas afterward. There are four checkboxes.
- Fix layer expressions upon replication. Our docs note that on large projects this may slow replication.
- Add replicates to Render Queue. This can save time if you use After Effects itself to render.
- Send replicates to Adobe Media Encoder. Templater saves each replicate as a separate AEP file in the Templater output folder, structured for automatic queuing. You must set that output directory as a watch folder in Media Encoder.
- Remove Templater settings from replica’s layers. If you render with Adobe Media Encoder, do not enable this. Our docs add a warning. It slows replication, it is prone to bugs and After Effects crashes, and it adds all replicates to the Open Recents list. They call it experimental, for use at your own risk.
The command line keys for these four are fix_layer_exp, replica_comps_to_queue, replica_comps_to_ame and remove_templater_effects. If replication is a new idea, start with render or replicate before you touch this category.
The categories that decide what goes into the layers and how the batch behaves
Footage
Footage settings govern how Templater imports footage assets, whether local or in the cloud, and what it does when it cannot reach one. Allow unique downloads for cloud-based assets makes Templater download a fresh file every time rather than reuse cached footage, and it adds a unique prefix to each downloaded file name so identically named files do not overwrite one another. Consider empty cells or null values as faulty tells Templater to treat empty footage references as problems. A dropdown then sets what happens when footage cannot be found or imported.
The default for that dropdown is “use my branded placeholder”. Templater 2.9.5 and later installs default branded placeholder files on your machine, in /Applications/Dataclay on macOS and C:\Users\Public\Documents\Dataclay on Windows. You can point to a custom placeholder for missing visual footage and another for missing audio footage by typing a file path or clicking the ellipsis button. The property reference lists five choices for the dropdown, ask me what to do, let me find the footage asset, skip the row, use my branded placeholder and cancel the process. It also warns that for an unattended run you should not pick the first two, because they stop and wait for a person. The Media Connector for Google Drive button sets up access to remote footage links in your data source. Our guide to missing footage and remote footage covers the policy question properly.
Text and the target composition
Text is the smallest category. You type a font name, click Search, and pick from the list of installed fonts with that name. The list shows PostScript names, and you confirm your choice in the Current Default field. This sets the default font for text elements in your target compositions.
The target composition setting sets a default composition for batch processes. Our docs say you can specify the target in three ways, and each has a catch. A target column or property in your data source overrides every other method, but you must still set one of the other two as a backup, and the docs recommend “from project”. A target in Preferences suits a single composition, and it acts as a back-up if you forget to set one elsewhere. But if you switch between AEP files that may not contain that name, you get an error. A target from the project is saved in the project file, and it overrides Preferences when the comp name is wrapped in double braces or double brackets. More than one comp using that notation in a project causes unexpected behavior. We cover the decision in choosing the target composition.
Bot
The Bot category only applies if you have the Templater Bot edition. The Bot acts automatically when it finds new, ready data in your data source. You choose whether it renders, replicates or spot checks, optionally name the Bot if more than one Bot shares a data source, and set how often it checks for new data. The default check interval is 0.5 minutes, which is thirty seconds. Our docs give minimums of 0.3 minutes for Google Sheets and 0.2 minutes for JSON sources and warn that setting the value too low may cause After Effects to behave unexpectedly. The limit on queued rows has a default and maximum of 20.
This category also holds the Setup Shell Commands and Setup ExtendScripts buttons, where you register scripts against Templater events, before or after each one. Shell commands run synchronously by default, which means After Effects waits for the script to finish, and an Asynchronous checkbox runs them as detached processes. If Templater sends compositions to Adobe Media Encoder, shell scripts execute after the target composition is versioned in After Effects, not after Media Encoder finishes rendering. Two guides go deeper than this map should: the Bot settings that matter and event scripts explained.
Generative AI
This category needs Templater 3.7 or later. It connects an existing generative AI account to Templater, and the supported providers are ChatGPT from OpenAI and Claude from Anthropic. You choose a provider and a model, and enter your own API key for the service you selected. Templater uses that key to talk to your account, so it is your account and your usage. The AI feature fills a text layer only when your data source has no content for that layer, which makes it a placeholder tool for designing and previewing. Our docs say plainly that generative text may or may not be useful for production level text, depending on your use case. The feature itself is set up on the layer, through the Templater Settings effect and its Default Prompt box. For what it does and where it stops, read what Templater AI does and doesn’t do.
Advanced
Advanced is where troubleshooting switches live, and each one carries a trade.
- Suppress all After Effects notices, warnings and error dialogs is selected by default, which minimizes interruptions. Clear it when you need to troubleshoot, because you will want to see what After Effects is saying.
- Turn off all logging for Templater can speed up performance, but without logs troubleshooting is very difficult.
- Purge all memory caches after each job helps if After Effects consumes too much memory during batch processing. As of Templater 3.4 it no longer empties the disk cache. As of After Effects 24.3, confirmation for that action cannot be bypassed automatically, so Bot users on After Effects 24.3 should optimize their After Effects preferences to limit interruptions to the automated workflow.
- Remove all unused footage after each job keeps the project file from becoming unmanageable when your data includes many footage assets.
- Layout Engine can be cleared if you plan to handle automatic layout with your own layer expressions. It needs Templater 3.0 or later.
- Time Sculpting can be cleared if you do not plan to use it. It was introduced in Templater 2.5, and the setting needs Templater 3.0 or later.
- Set log location takes the folder where Templater saves templater.log and templater.err, and a link button opens the current log file.
Advanced Category
Advanced switches and their trade-offs
| Switch | Default state | Trade-off if changed |
|---|---|---|
| Suppress AE notices and dialogs | Selected by default | Clear it when you need to troubleshoot |
| Turn off all logging | Off by default | Without logs troubleshooting is very difficult |
| Purge all memory caches after each job | Available | As of After Effects 24.3, confirmation cannot be bypassed automatically |
| Remove all unused footage after each job | Available | Keeps the project file from becoming unmanageable |
| Layout Engine | On by default | Clear if you plan to handle automatic layout with your own layer expressions |
Command line keys, a worked example and a bottom line
Many of the settings above have a counterpart in the templater-options.json file for command line runs. The prefs property keys reference lists them with types and defaults, such as default_target for the target composition, missing_footage for the dropdown (with a default of 3), suppress_ae_dialogs, use_engine_layout and use_engine_time for the two switches in Advanced, purge_caches, silence_logging, unique_downloads and empty_is_faulty. The spot_checking, bot, que and remote_json groups hold more. We did not find keys for every option in the dialog, so check the reference before assuming a setting can be set from the command line. The practical consequence is that you can configure a machine through the dialog once, learn which settings matter, and then write those same choices into a file for machines that nobody sits at.
Here is a hypothetical, and we are labeling it as one. A producer inherits a Templater project from a colleague who has left. Titles come out garbled. She opens Preferences and goes to Data Source, where the first checkbox is set for an Excel export, but her data comes from a local TSV exported from Google Sheets. She clears it. The titles are clean. Next, a render stops partway because a footage link is dead, so she checks Footage and sees the dropdown is set to ask her what to do. For an overnight run she switches it to the branded placeholder, and adds custom placeholder files with her own branding. That is two categories, and in this example both fixes live in the Preferences dialog.
The map is also a short list of defaults worth knowing. By default the Bot checks every 0.5 minutes, and its row limit is 20. Suppression of After Effects dialogs is on. Missing footage defaults to the branded placeholder. Everything else is a deliberate choice.
Where this map is not enough
This page tells you where a setting lives. It does not tell you the right value for your studio. Some choices depend on your data and delivery. The Footage policy depends on whether a missing image should stop the batch or ship with a placeholder. The Replication checkboxes depend on how you render. If you want a deeper treatment of any category, use the links above, or browse our learning hub. And if you are new to the plugin and not yet sure which edition you need, the Templater page describes the editions.
The bottom line
Learn the category names and you know where everything is. Data Source decides how rows are read, Spot Checks decides how you verify, Footage decides what happens when assets go missing, and Advanced holds the switches for troubleshooting. You do not need to touch every category, and several ship with defaults you can leave alone. Open Preferences when something behaves oddly, find the category that owns the behavior, and change one setting at a time.
Here are the questions worth answering before you change anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do I open Templater’s Preferences?
Open After Effects, find the Templater panel and click Preferences. If you cannot see the panel, click Window and select Templater 3.jsxbin. In version 3.4 or later, the dialog reopens on the category you last configured during your work session. The Information icon at the bottom shows the license agreement, version and build, and the Help icon opens the online help.
Why does my text look wrong when I read a spreadsheet export?
Check the first checkbox under Data Source. Leave it enabled if your data is a tab delimited file exported from Excel or Numbers. Disable it if your data comes from QUE, a JSON file or a TSV exported from Google Sheets. Our property reference says to change the matching tsv_from_excel setting when you see unexpected results in text layers.
Why is the QUE Configuration button disabled?
The button is disabled when you are not logged in to QUE. Log in first, then open Data Source again. QUE requires Templater 3.0 or later, so confirm your version too. The button lets you add your machine as a QUE satellite, and our guide on QUE satellites explains what that means.
Which Preferences categories need a newer version of Templater?
Spot checks need version 3.0 or later in the Pro or Bot edition. Generative AI needs 3.7 or later. The option to bring the target comp into focus while previewing Time Sculpting needs 3.4 or later. Highlighting the most recently previewed Google Sheets row needs 3.7 or later. The Layout Engine and Time Sculpting switches in Advanced need 3.0 or later.
What does the Generative AI category need from me?
You need an existing account with a supported provider, which our docs list as ChatGPT from OpenAI and Claude from Anthropic. In the category you choose the provider and model, then enter your API key. Then you set a Default Prompt on each text layer through the Templater Settings effect. It fills a layer only when your data source has no content for it.
Should I turn off logging to make batches faster?
Our docs say turning off all logging can speed up performance, but that having no logs makes troubleshooting very difficult. The property reference goes further and says the matching silence_logging key should normally never be set to true, except for large batches where you want logging skipped for speed. If you are not sure, leave logging on.
Do the command line options match the Preferences dialog?
In part. The prefs property keys in templater-options.json cover many of the dialog’s settings, including footage handling, replication, spot checking, Bot, QUE and remote JSON. We did not find keys for every option, and the list has no Licensing group. Use the dialog to learn which setting you want, then write the same choice into the options file for unattended machines.
