Templater turns one finished After Effects composition into as many versions as you have rows of data. You rig the template once, point it at a data source, and let it render. Everything else in this guide is a detail about one of those three steps.
We wrote it for the person who has just been handed a job that sounds impossible. Three hundred versions of a spot, each with a different name, photo, and price. Eleven languages of the same lower third. A weekly graphics package that has to ship every Friday whether anyone is at their desk or not. The guide follows the questions that job raises, in the order they tend to arrive.
What Templater is, and what it is not
Templater is a plugin for Adobe After Effects. It lives inside the application you already use for motion work, as a panel, so you do not change tools to customize video. You build your composition the way you always have. Then you “rig” it, which means you tell Templater which layers should change and which column or field in your data should drive each one.
Once a template is rigged, you pair it with a data source and Templater applies the data to the composition. Text changes. Images swap. Brand colors change. Embedded footage is replaced. You can customize one layer or every layer, and one template can become many different videos without extra hands-on time from you.
It helps to be clear about the edges. Templater does not design your video for you. It does not generate footage or write copy. We cover that line in our post on generative AI versus media automation, where the short version is that an AI tool can produce words and Templater can place them into a finished design. It also does not replace After Effects. It requires it. Templater is the glue between your data and your composition, and After Effects still does the rendering.
Where does it sit in the rest of what we make? Templater is the cornerstone of a suite we call Dataclay Station. QUE is the JSON-based data source and API that was built to work with Templater. Projector renders several videos at once and distributes them. Autografs are ready-made compositions that are already rigged. You can use Templater alone for years and never touch the others. Plenty of people do.
The three editions, in plain terms
Templater comes in three editions, and they stack. Each one includes everything in the one before it.
Rig prepares the project. You map data to layers and preview how those layers change as the data is processed. Rig is the right pick when swapping content by hand eats your time, when you are preparing a project for another machine that runs Pro or Bot, or when you want to build a Templater-ready project to sell or distribute as a template.
Pro adds the batch functions. It can render or replicate re-versioned master compositions using your data. Pro is the right pick when a client hands you a database of customer information and wants many unique videos quickly, or when several artists need to work at once on different variations of a master composition.
Bot adds automation. It checks a data source periodically for new data and starts new renders on its own, and it can take data pushed in from the command line. Bot is the right pick when videos have to appear on demand without a person pressing a button, or when a web or mobile app feeds the data.
One trap is worth stating early because we see it often. Rig cannot batch output. The Render and Replicate buttons are disabled in Rig, and the Enable Bot button works only in Bot. Our free 30-day trial includes everything, including Bot-only features, so it is easy to fall for a function in the trial that a Rig license will not give you. Decide on the edition by the job, not by what you saw during the trial.
Rigging a template so it survives real data
The rigging step is where most of the craft is. A template that looks perfect with the sample name “Jordan” can fall apart on the row that contains a name three times as long. Templater gives you several tools for exactly this problem, and it is worth knowing them before you start building.
Mapping data to layers
You map your spreadsheet or JSON fields directly to composition layers. Text layers take text. Image and footage layers take a file path or a link. You can reference local footage or cloud-based footage, and our post on Smart URL Processing covers pulling remote footage into a template.
Templater reads text exactly as it appears in your data, so commas, quotes, apostrophes, and new lines all arrive intact. Characters from any language work, as long as the installed fonts contain the glyphs. Right-to-left scripts are supported. That makes localization a data problem instead of a design problem, which is the reason we point people to our write-up on localization with Templater when a project involves many languages.
Layout rules and Time Sculpting
Two features handle the “what if the content is bigger than I planned” problem. Layout rules let Templater adjust dynamic layers relative to their containing composition and to sibling layers when the data arrives. You do not nudge, scale, and reposition each version by hand. You describe the relationship once. Our post on layout rules goes through how they are set up.
Time Sculpting does the same job for duration. It uses time-based rules to crop, trim, shift, and stretch layers, so footage of different lengths can drop into one template without breaking the design. A twelve-second clip and a thirty-second clip can both fit the same structure. Time Sculpting is patented, and the post on time sculpting techniques walks through four techniques.
Picture a concrete case. A regional sports network wants a player card for every athlete on a roster. Each card has a name, a stat line, and a short clip of that player. The names vary in length, and so do the clips. With layout rules, the name block resizes against the photo frame. With Time Sculpting, the clip stretches or trims to match the card’s timing. The designer builds one card. The roster does the rest.
Preview before you commit
Templater lets you preview a composition with your data with a click, before rendering or replicating anything. You can step through jobs and see how your text, footage, and colors behave. This is where you find the problem row, and finding it here costs a few seconds. Finding it after four hundred renders costs an afternoon.
In Pro and Bot you can go one step further and generate spot checks. A spot check is a still image or a short movie clip of specific frames from a data-merged composition. You choose the frames with named composition timeline markers. If there are no markers, Templater samples frames at even intervals across the composition. It is a fast way to review how data lands across many jobs, and our post on generating spot checks explains the setup. You can also export spot checks through the command line, and pass the file path of any spot check to a script registered to a Templater event.
Save the setup with the project
Project presets store the data source, footage folder, and output folder references inside your After Effects project file. Open the project on another machine and the references travel with it. Custom output naming lets you set a file name per job from a column in your data, so the outputs come out already labeled. And “switch projects from data” lets two or more template files share one data source, choosing the template row by row.
There is a log too. Templater records what it is doing, and you can read the log files for full transparency when something behaves unexpectedly.
Running the batch: render, replicate, automate
With a rigged template and a data source, the question becomes how the videos get made and who presses the button. There is more than one answer, and the right one depends on volume and on who is around.
Render or Replicate
Render takes your master composition, inserts the data, and renders. Replicate inserts the data and saves a copy of the project for each version instead, kept in a clean folder structure. You can then send the copies to the After Effects render queue or to Adobe Media Encoder.
Choose Render when you want finished files with the least handling. Choose Replicate when you want to touch up a version before it renders, or when you need an output codec After Effects does not include, because Media Encoder supports formats After Effects lacks. Switching between the two is a checkbox. Our post on batch rendering in After Effects goes deeper on that choice.
Letting the Bot do it
Templater Bot operates After Effects for you. When it finds new data, it triggers the customization and rendering process. You can also push data in through the command line interface, which gives developers control over most of the settings you would otherwise click in the panel through a command line options file. Bot can process very large data sets.
People ask whether you can really make hundreds of thousands of videos. Yes. There are two ways to do it, in a queue or in parallel. In a queue, Templater breaks a large workload into manageable batches and runs them in sequence so it does not overload the machine. In parallel, you run several machines with Templater Bot at once, which divides the workload across devices so you produce more videos per hour. Our FAQ points to guides on setting up your data source for multiple Bots.
Estimating how long it will take
We do not publish a speed number, because rendering time depends on the average video length, output resolution, your hardware, the ratio of dynamic to static frames, how heavy the effects are, and how the template is built. What we recommend is a pre-flight. Render one video, or a small batch, on a machine comparable to your production machine. Make sure that video looks like the rest of the set. Multiply its render time by the number of videos. If you render sequentially, that gives you a fair estimate. Two machines running Bot in parallel cut the total roughly in half, three machines in a third, and so on.
If export speed is the pain, our tips for speeding up After Effects exports start with the unglamorous fix. Templater evaluates every layer in your project, so deleting unused layers, effects, and compositions lowers the workload. Pre-composing and cropping heavily scaled layers also helps.
Extending the pipeline with scripts
Templater can run shell scripts or ExtendScripts hooked into events it broadcasts. That is how people build the parts of a workflow that sit around the render. Our FAQ describes scripts that upload finished videos to a streaming provider, return the video’s URL to the data source so an email campaign can embed it, or send an email or SMS when an upload succeeds. Sample scripts and documentation for Windows, Mac, and Node.js are in our GitHub repository. If you would rather not write them, our custom development team can.
Where it can run
Templater runs on macOS, including native Apple Silicon support, and on Windows. The download page lists the supported After Effects versions, and there is a Legacy installer for older ones. You can run Templater on Windows Server machines in a cloud environment such as AWS, with no special Dataclay license. The catch is on Adobe’s side. After Effects must be installed and running in the cloud, and Adobe’s standard license does not allow it on a server, so you need to arrange the right license with Adobe. For machines with no internet access, there is an offline activation process.
Choosing data, and knowing the limits
Templater reads Google Sheets, tab-separated value files exported from Excel, Numbers, or Sheets, and JSON files or feeds. It also works with QUE, which is JSON-based and was built for it.
Start where you are. If your data lives in a spreadsheet and a few people edit it, Google Sheets is a natural fit, and we have a full walkthrough for Google Sheets. If the data comes out of an app or database, JSON is easier to generate and does not break when someone inserts a column. Our post on five tested data sources shows what has worked for others. QUE becomes the better choice as volume and complexity grow, because spreadsheets get unwieldy and QUE exposes API endpoints that can receive data from anywhere.
Now the limits, stated plainly, because a guide that only sells is not worth reading.
- Templater cannot read an Excel file directly. You export to a tab-delimited file first.
- It pulls data from a single data source, and from a single worksheet within a Google Sheet. You cannot connect to several tabs at once.
- A single text layer takes one font, size, weight, and style. You cannot mark up one layer with a bold word and an italic word. A partial workaround is to position separate text layers next to each other with attachment properties.
- Templater does not ship with a front-end web or mobile app. It is built to be the back end, with ample documentation so developers can build the interface they need.
- Rig does not batch. We said it above and we will say it again, because it is the most common purchasing mistake.
- QUE does not load balance jobs across satellites. You assign jobs to specific satellites manually, and you are responsible for making sure fonts, plugins, and assets exist on each one.
Licensing has two forms worth knowing. A Standard License is activated and used on one machine at a time and must be deactivated to move. A Floating License can be used by any number of devices on a network connected to a licensing server, one at a time, and it is released for the next system when the user finishes. There is a 30-day free trial, and if you buy and find it does not fit, contact us within 30 days for a refund. For prices, see our licensing guide.
Who should look elsewhere
If your video work never starts in After Effects, Templater is the wrong tool, because it is built around that application. If you need a few versions a month and the changes are a headline and a logo, hand editing is faster than rigging. A rig takes thought and care. It pays back when you have enough versions that the setup cost spreads thin, or when a new batch arrives every week for a year.
The bottom line
Templater is for people who already work in After Effects and have more versions to make than hands to make them. Rig the template once, test it against your worst row, pick the edition that matches who presses the button, and let the data do the repetition. Start with the free trial on a real project, not a demo, and render your ugliest row first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the questions we hear most often from people sizing Templater up for a first real project.
Do I need to know how to code to use Templater?
No. You rig a template inside After Effects by mapping data fields to layers, and you preview the result in the same panel. Coding enters the picture only when you want to extend the workflow, for example with event scripts that upload videos or send a notification, or with the command line interface and QUE API for apps. Dataclay offers scripting and implementation services if you want help with those parts.
Which edition of Templater do I need?
Rig is for an artist who sets up and previews a project. Pro adds the Render and Replicate functions so you can process batches. Bot adds full automation, with background monitoring of a data source and command line control. Different people on a team may need different editions. A common setup is Rig for designers who build templates and Pro or Bot on the machines that produce output.
Can Templater read data straight from Excel?
Not directly. Export your Excel data to a tab-delimited file first, then use that file as your data source. Templater also reads Google Sheets, JSON files, and JSON feeds. If your team wants to stay in a spreadsheet and still have shared access, a Google Sheet is usually the easier path.
Can I render more than one video at a time?
Yes, in two ways. Templater processes large workloads in a queue, one batch after another, so your machine is not overloaded. For parallel output you can run Templater Bot on several machines, which divides the workload. On a single machine, Projector renders several videos at once based on the number of cores in the machine.
Does Templater work with Premiere Pro?
We have a post on inserting Templater into Premiere via Dynamic Link. Templater works in After Effects, and Dynamic Link lets Premiere use the After Effects composition. Our Rig value post also mentions versioning After Effects content embedded in Premiere that way. Read the Dynamic Link post for the setup steps.
Can I try Templater before I buy?
Yes. There is a 30-day free trial with all features, including the ones exclusive to Bot. If you buy a license afterward and it turns out not to fit, contact us for a refund within 30 days. Test on a real project with your real data, and include the hardest row in your data set, because that row tells you the most.
