Tutorial 7

Tutorial 7: Studio tools

One-word checks, a project's history, pulling comps into their own project, and bringing a project to your studio's naming. Every output below is real.

Is it ready? (mj check)

$ mj check "Spring Promo"
Spring Promo.aep: 4 things to fix.

  !! Expressions: 1 error, 0 warnings.
  !! Health: 80 out of 100 (needs a look).
  !! Fonts: 2 missing (Brandon Grotesque, Inter).
  !! Footage: 1 missing (logo.psd).
  ?? Third-party effects to confirm: S_Glow.

It exits 1 while anything needs fixing. --details prints the full lint, preflight and health reports. With scraper 1.1, the font verdict comes from After Effects itself; otherwise from this Mac's font folders.

What happened to this project? (mj timeline)

$ mj timeline "Spring Promo"
Spring Promo.aep: 2 scrapes and 1 snapshot, oldest first (times are UTC).
  ...   health  92   first scrape
  ...   health  80   comp "Outro" added (0 layers); comp "Main": frame rate 24 -> 30; layer "Flash" added to "Main"; and 3 more
  ...   snapshot   26b2effec987

Studio naming (mj conform)

$ mj conform "Spring Promo"
Spring Promo.aep against MographJailed studio default: 4 changes.
  Rename comps (1):
    Lower Third -> PRE_Lower_Third
  Rename layers (3):
    Main / Title -> TXT_Title
    Main / Lower Third -> PRE_Lower_Third
    Lower Third / Name -> TXT_Name

This is a plan; nothing was changed.

With a scraper 1.1 receipt the plan also covers labels, folders, solids and adjustment layers, and updates every expression that names a renamed comp or layer. Write your own spec (mj-man studio lists every key) and set it once: mj config set studio_spec ~/studio.mjstudio. mj conform "Spring Promo" --run makes the job and sends it to After Effects.

One comp as its own project (mj extract)

$ mj extract "Spring Promo" "Lower Third" --label lower-third
Made an extract job: "Lower Third" from Spring Promo.aep.
  The new project keeps 1 comp and 1 footage item; 2 other comps and 1 footage item go.
  Job folder: ~/AE/versions/lower-third.mjjob

Your project is not touched: After Effects works on before.aep in the job folder and saves result.aep.
Next:  mj ae run ~/AE/versions/lower-third.mjjob

mj ae run sends the job to After Effects. The job closes your open project with the usual save prompt, works only on the job's copy, and saves result.aep next to it. Afterwards:

$ mj ae verify ~/AE/versions/lower-third.mjjob

This confirms that the job ran and the result was saved, and that your original is byte-for-byte unchanged.