Source data from JSON or SRT from inside script

[LazerJesus]

Hi, i am loading a script as an asset. said script reads a text/srt file that i copy to the workfolder in a prerender job.

      {
        type: "script",
        src: `http://localhost:${port}/assets/${subtitleScript}`,
      },
    ],
    actions: {
      prerender: [
        {
          module: "@nexrender/action-copy",
          input: process.cwd() + `/assets/${subtitleSRT}`,
          output: "sub.srt",
        },
      ],

(i disabled the postrender check in action-copy)

when run, the job throws

aerender ERROR: Error executing script: /Users/finnfrotscher/code/nex/test1/tmp/98W0llgzRff0q-ciUBZ50/nexrender-98W0llgzRff0q-ciUBZ50-script.jsx
TypeError: undefined is not an object
aerender ERROR: Runtime error in After Effects.

how can i see which line failed? what is your prefered way to access data from an external source into a script?

[LazerJesus]

does the script have access to a logging while rendering inside aerender?

[inlife]

The easiest way to figure out where the error happens would probably be to use ExtendScript Toolkit/Debugger. Just make sure to prevent nexrender from removing that folder via --skip-cleanup, and then open temporary project, and try to debug it manually.

As far as I know, there is no easy way to access logging from internal scripting. I might be wrong on this one tho.

[LazerJesus]

i am doing that. yesterday, the generated script would not run when passed to aerender but when run inside the debugger, there was no issue. Anyway i resolved that. coming back to the original question: how do i load a json or srt file into the temp folder? is this prerender copy pattern the only way?

[inlife]

Hm, that actually brings up a good question, nexrender lacks an asset type to just put a simple file same way as it does for image/video/audio files. Would that approach work for you (adding json/srt file as a nexrender job asset)?

[LazerJesus]

how would I access that asset? if the asset is copied to the temp folder and i could read it from my script with a simple fs.read, that would work for me. but all that would change is that i move the

prerender: [{
       module: "@nexrender/action-copy",
       input: process.cwd() + `/assets/${subtitleSRT}`,
       output: "sub.srt" },

to

assets: [{
        type: "script",
        src: `http://localhost:${port}/assets/${subtitleSRT}` },

Is that necessary?

more advanced parsing out of the box might be cool, but i dont see how that might be implemented.

[LazerJesus]

my current solution is to read my Script in job.js, += the content of the the SRT and src: base64,${script+srt} it.

[LazerJesus]

A way to import type static would be super nice. i propose:

{
  type: "static",
  src: `file, http, base64`,
  name: "globalVariableName"
}

where the file content is stored in globalVariableName as plain text. or if we add another key parser, we could supply a parser module that is called with the plain text and returns an object, which is then stored in globalVariableName

[inlife]

@FinnFrotscher where that globalVariableName would exist? is it a scripting variable or what is that?

[LazerJesus]

its a variable that is added at the beginning of the generated jsx script nexrender-${id}-script.jsx as far as i understand, all the scripts i add as assets are bundled into this script. by adding it as a variable in the beginning of the generated script, my custom scripts should be able to access the variable at runtime.

[inlife]

I see. So you would be able to access the "content" of that custom data inside of the scripting env. I'll think about it a bit more, but overall, yeah, I don't see a reason why not add something like that! :)

[LazerJesus]

i see another strategy. its also possible to copy the specified file to the tmp directory and provide a global function to access its contents. a global function

readDataFile(name){
   return fs.readSync(tmpPath + name)
}

tbh, i dont have any prefered strategy and as long as i have a way to solve the problem, i am good. i am overall impressed with the quality of the code! thank you :)

[inlife]

Sure, I'll think about a fitting solution

i am overall impressed with the quality of the code! thank you :)

Oh thanks, that very nice to hear 😄

[maxtkacz]

@FinnFrotscher Hey Finn, any chance you’d be willing to share your SRT parsing script? I’ve had mixed success with expression based parsing functions (and performance was shoddy) and would rather not reinvent the wheel. Let me know :) thanks!

[mackenly]

+1 on what @maxtkacz said. It's has been very difficult to get anything to work or find a solution.

[LazerJesus]

hey, i cant pass on my script, sadly. but my general approach was to avoid expressions completely and build a custom .jsx script. I tried multiple ways of loading the srt file's text content. passing it to NX as a string and deciding it inside ae turned out to work the best. then i set keyframes for the text property. subtitleLayer.property("Source Text").setValueAtTime is the magic function

[mackenly]

@FinnFrotscher That's 100% understandable. Thank you!

[inlife]

A new static asset type was introduced in 1.14.0, please share your feedback