Plainly User Documentation

Note that each project can define if the font checking should be strict during rendering or not. It’s used for safeguarding against the poor-quality videos, as sometimes this issue can occur if the original font does not support certain characters in the new text.

If the strict font checking is enabled, after a successful render a check will be performed to confirm that the fonts shown in the video are matching project ones. If the fonts are for any reason not matching, the render will be marked as failed with Fonts invalid error.

If the strict font checking is disabled, the render can never fail with the Fonts invalid error, however some layers could have a fallback font applied if the original one can not be set.

The default behavior is to have the strict font checking enabled, but you can change it in the Project details page.

You can also parametrize effects that exist in your After Effects project. You can do that for any layer that contains effects. Such layers will be marked with the Adjustment icon.

To parametrize an effect, click on the layer, and in Parametrize layer window choose the effect you want to parametrize in the dropdown menu under the Apply for effect.

As before, you can choose between static and dynamic values. If you choose dynamic, you will need to provide a display name and a parameter name. Once parametrized you can change the value of the effect when rendering the video.

If you want to get started quickly or have many layers to make dynamic, you can use the automatic parametrization feature. This feature will automatically generate templates and optionally parametrize layers that are text, media or colors.

Templates are generated by analysing the project’s compositions, and layer parametrization is applied to layers contained in the selected composition tree. The type of the auto-parametrization defines which composition will be selected for template creation, and which layer will be selected for parametrization.

The action can be done through the Auto Create Templates API endpoint or in the UI by clicking the Auto-generate button in the Templates section of the Project details page.

We currently support two types of automatic parametrization, All and Prefix.

This type will, without any additional configuration, generate a single template for the root composition with the most nested layers without parametrizing any layer.

You can control the behaviour of this auto-parametrization type by using the following options:

This type will generate templates for all compositions that have a specific prefix in their name. This is useful if you have a lot of compositions, and you want to generate templates for a subset only. Auto layer parametrization will also be done based on the provided prefixes, and only prefixed layers will be parametrized.

The available option for this auto-parametrization type are:

A key thing to point out is that scripts are executed in the order that you set them up in the parameterization step.

For example, sometimes you want to apply the shiftIn before the crop script (just think for a second how would you do this if you were doing it manually, and then apply scripts in the same way). This is really important because not applying them in the correct order can cause unwanted results.

Some of the options support the usage of parameter references as their values. This is useful when you want to have a dynamic option that depend on a render parameter. To reference a parameter in an option value, you need to use the following syntax:

The default value is optional, and if not defined, will resolve the option to null if the given parameter name could not be found in the render parameters. Optionally, you can define an empty string as the default value, by using the following syntax:

You can combine multiple parameter references and fixed (static) values in the same option. In this case all the references will be replaced by their values, and the fixed values will remain as they are. Note that if any of the referenced parameters is given without a default value and without a render-time value then the entire result of the option will be null.

The fields that support parameter references are:

Custom projects often have a lot of layers. In order to be as efficient as possible during setup, you can put a prefix in the layer when naming layers that should be dynamic. This way you can find them easily in Plainly during the parametrization.

To easily find the rendering compositions in the setup process, make sure that you add a prefix (.ie “render_”) to make your life easier.

Depending on what type of text are you using in the template (paragraph or point) you can add the following expressions in order to achieve auto-scaling. When added, the text will automatically scale based on the input, and a defined bounding box.

One of the biggest issues when creating templates is scaling images and videos. In a perfect world, all images/videos are the same dimensions but this usually is not the case. Luckily you can get auto-scaling assets in After Effects.

To begin, each dynamic image or video should reside within its own composition. Think of these compositions as containers that hold the respective media. It’s essential not to apply any effects or keyframes directly to the image or video within these compositions; instead, all adjustments should be made to the composition itself.

The dimensions of these "container" compositions should reflect the maximum size you want the image or video to appear within your project.

We need to add the Scale to Comp effect on each image/video. This effect will automatically scale the image/video according to its container comp.

Download the image from this link. Install the preset and apply the effect to every dynamic image/video.

When you apply it, you will have a couple of options in your "Effect Controls" panel, make sure to check the first box, and apply an expression to the second checkbox:

If Composition is Vertical:

If Composition is Horizontal:

If you want to dynamically swap a color of a solid layer, we support that out of the box. Just upload your project, make your solid dynamic, and you will be able to control its colors.

If you want to dynamically swap out colors of other layers (such as shape, text or similar) you will have to set up a color-control layer. This is a text layer in After Effects that will hill hold the HEX value of the color.

Start by adding a new text layer, and type in the hex code of the color (without the #). Then, go to the layer which you will re-color and add the following expression to its color property:

Make sure that you reference the right comp and the right layer! You can have as many dynamic colors as you wish, just make sure to create a text layer for each color.

If the layer you want to re-color doesn’t have a color property, you can add a fill effect and then apply the expression to the color property of that fill effect.

Batch renders are downloadable as a batch. After sending a batch render, or while on the renders page, you can click on the Batch download button, that will take you to the download page. There you will choose which batch you want to download, click next, review your chosen renders, and once you are ready, download the batch.

By default, Plainly will render out a video in the MP4 format using with following encoding properties:

Render format is controlled by the Output Format settings, and there are two ways you can control and adjust the rendering format to your needs.

1. Define After Effects output module settings

First way is to explicitly control the output of the After Effects rendering process. If output module is set during the rendering Plainly will provide exact video as produced by After Effects without any additional encoding by default. This gives you few benefits:

Currently, the available options for output module are:

2. Use post encoding settings

Second way is to use post encoding settings which add additional step of encoding the video output by After Effects using the FFmpeg library. There are few different post encoding types you can use:

The custom encoding settings can be defined using one of or both of the following parameters:

If both encodingFormat and encodingParamsLine are provided, the final video format will be determined by the encodingFormat parameter, however the encodingParamsLine will be used as additional encoding parameters.

To enable captions, go to the Captions advanced render option and provide the URL to the captions (.srt) file. Optionally, you can choose one of three pre-defined caption styles, and you can also choose the position where the caption should be displayed. If you don’t provide these options, the BASIC will be used for style, and the BOTTOM for position.

There are five built-in caption styles:

Currently, the available caption positions are BOTTOM (default), CENTER and TOP.

API example:

If you want to scale the resolution of the rendered video, this can be done with scale post encoding type. You need to provide the percentage as the scaling factor. Scaling can range from 1 to 400. A scaling percentage of 100% will keep the video at its original resolution, while values less will reduce and values greater will increase the resolution. For example, if you want to scale the video down to 50% of its original size, you can set the scaling percentage to 50, or if you want to scale the video up to double its original size, you can set the scaling percentage to 200.

API example:

By default, the file name of a rendered video will be randomly generated, for example, 1e89f1b8-076c-4e2b-a750-373ab227346a.mp4. In most cases this is fine, however this is not perfect for the use cases when the file is downloaded by the end user, or when you want to have a more descriptive file name.

If you want to have a different name and instant download, you can apply the attachment options for the output. This will allow you to set the file name of the rendered video, and will force the browser to download the video instead of playing it.

This options is available on the UI under the Output Format settings, where you need to check the Instant download option and provide the desired file name in the Instant download file name.

If you are using the API, you can set the outputFormat.attachment parameter to true and provide the desired file name in the outputFormat.attachmentFileName parameter when calling the New Render endpoint.

If you need to make further changes to your After Effects project after rendering, you can enable the project files upload option. This will collect all modified files, compress them into a ZIP file, and upload the modified project to the server for easy download.

To enable this feature using the UI, you need to check the Upload project files option under the Project settings.

If you are using the API, you can set the projectFiles.uploadEnabled parameter to true.

If you want to get notified when the render is done, you can set up a webhook notification. Webhook is a URL that you can pass to Plainly when invoking a render, and once the render is done we will send a POST request to that URL with the result of the render process.

When passing the webhook information, beside the URL you can include additional properties and options:

If you enable this option, Plainly will not only export the video but also thumbnails which you can, for example, use as a poster on social medias.

There are two options on how you can get thumbnails:

Thumbnails will be visible in the Render details page, as well as in the Render model under thumbnailsUris field if you are using the API.

You can pass a link to an image or video, that you want to use as a watermark, or upload it directly from your local machine. You can also pass encoding parameters for the watermark. Having encoding params allows for the control of how watermark is added. If not passed, the watermark will be placed in the top left corner of the video.

Here are some examples of encoding parameters that you can use for the watermark:

Top left

Top right

Bottom left

Bottom right

Center

As you’ve noticed, we are using multiple filters here:

You can read more about the filters and other possibilities at the FFmpeg documentation.

In some cases you want to send additional data to a Video delivery integration. For example, you might want to send an internal ID, or the name of the folder where video should be uploaded. This can be done using the Integration passthrough field.

Every active integration logs its activity. You can see the logs by clicking on the Logs button on the top right side of the integrations page.

The logs are filterable by a time range and name of the integration (using the field Flows).

Logs are especially useful when you are seeing errors in integration executions, as they will give you a detailed error message and a stack trace.

While you set up integrations you will be connecting multiple 3rd party tool accounts to Plainly. You can see all connected accounts by clicking on the Accounts button on the top right side of the integrations page.

These are short form videos for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok…​etc. and their purpose is to promote your articles. Their settings are:

Presenter videos are still in development. Once live they will be similar to summary slideshow videos with one key difference. Presenter videos will also have an AI avatar that will read out the summarized version of your article.

Summary slideshow videos are videos that summarize an article in an engaging video. The body of the article will be processed (by AI), and it will summarize it, create on-screen text, voiceover, and find relevant stock assets to be used in the video. The settings for this video are:

As the VideoGenius feature is built on top of the Plainly API, all of its features are accessible by our API. This means that you can use Plainly’s API to automate the creation of videos. To find out more, check out our API documentation.

Revisions are simply versions of your video. Every video starts with an automated revision that’s created by the AI. You can have multiple revisions, and you can switch between them. New revision is created every time you click on the Edit revision button. Your newly created revision will be in the draft state (more about states under).

You can preview and easily switch between revisions in the top right corner.

Scenes are pretty straightforward. Each scene has a voiceover, assets, and on-screen text. The amount of scenes you will have in the video is based on the length of the article, and the maximum is determined by the user when setting up the Scene Management script.

You can quickly go through the scenes in the sidebar on the right. The length of the scenes is determined by the voiceover script in that scene.

If you want to make a scene shorter, you can do that by removing parts of the voiceover. You can also completely delete scenes or duplicate & merge them.

Scenes are only available for the Summary Slideshow and Presenter video types. Social Media doesn’t have scenes.

Assets are videos or images that are contained within the final video. Please note that these are not the graphical elements you have in your template, but rather dynamic videos and images that are replaced for each article.

In the automated revision, which is created by the AI the assets will be automatically picked from our partner stock asset marketplaces. In the editing phase, you can edit these assets, and swap them with other assets from the marketplaces or even add your own.

Each scene has one asset. To edit it, click on the Edit button on the asset preview. That will lead you to the asset selection screen where you can either search for new assets or add your own.

Headlines and sub-headlines are the on-screen text displayed in every scene. The maximum amount of headlines/sub-headlines per scene is determined by the user while setting up the Scene Management script. Please note that the max headline number needs to match the number of headlines you have in your After Effects template.

You can freely edit, add, or delete the headlines using the interface below.

After making all the edits, you can click on the Save draft button to save the inputs you made. To initiate rendering, you will need to click the Render revision button. There are multiple states in which the revision can be:

All users and their organization-level roles are listed in the Settings > Team members page. Users can hold any of the following org-level roles:

To invite a new team member, click Invite in the Settings > Team members page. Enter the email address of the person you want to invite and select the role you want to assign to them. The invited person will receive an email with an invitation link.

If the person you are inviting is not a Plainly user yet, they will need to create an account first with the email address you invited them to. Upon the first login, they will be asked to accept or reject the invitation.

Existing users will be able to accept the invitation directly in the Invites page.

If you are the organization owner, you can change the role of any team member in the Settings > Team members page. Click the Change role button next to the team member’s name and select the new role from the dropdown.

In addition, you can remove a team member from the organization by clicking the Remove button next to their name. If the removed member was only part of this organization, a new private organization will be created for them.

As you can be a member of multiple organizations, you should understand how to select the organization you are currently working with.

First, each Plainly user has a default organization, and usually this is the organization that was created when the user registered. By default, when you visit the Plainly dashboard, you will see the default organization.

To switch between organizations, click the organization name in the top left corner of the dashboard sidebar and select the organization you want to work with in the Switch organization menu item. Plainly will remember the last organization you worked with and will show it by default next time you visit the dashboard as long as you are using the same browser. If you switch to a different browser or device, you will need to select the target organization again.

The Account settings page allows you to manage your organizations as well.

Plainly currently supports After Effects versions from 2022 to 2024. If you’re using a different version, you will get a failed analysis with Unsupported version of After Effects. error. Please make sure that the project is created in one of the supported After Effects versions.

If your project uses asset files (images, video, audio, etc.) that are not included in the .zip file you uploaded, you will get a failed analysis. Please make sure that all the necessary asset files (images, videos, audio files, etc.) used by your project, are included in the .zip file you uploaded.

See guide on collecting assets for more info on how to solve the issue.

Some media formats or files inside your project are not supported by Plainly. These usually fail into 2 categories:

The error message in the UI will look like this:

If the fonts used in your After Effects project are missing from the provided .zip file, analysis will not succeed. Ensure that all required fonts, compatible with OTF and TTF formats, are properly packaged. The PostScript names of packaged fonts are case-sensitive and must exactly match the ones used in your project.

Please have a look at the Font Management section for more info on how to solve the issue.

If you have duplicate fonts in your project, you will get a failed analysis. Please remove all duplicate fonts from your project, and leave only one instance of each needed font. Then, re-upload the project and try again.

Please have a look at the Font Management section for more info on how to solve the issue.

Error occurred due to the inability to parse the packaged fonts in the project, some of the fonts might be corrupted. Please download and replace the corrupted fonts in the project, and try re-uploading the project again.

Please have a look at the Font Management section for more info on how to solve the issue.

Error occurred due to the inability to read the fonts from the text layers in the project. Please re-analyze the project or upload the project, and try again.

Please have a look at the Font Management section for more info on how to solve the issue.

This error occurs when the rendering cannot be processed as the parameters provided for the given render are invalid. This usually happens in two cases:

If you’re experiencing failed render with a project that you already set up you probably changed something and used the "Edit" project button. These issues appear when you change a layer that was parametrized. If you use the "Edit" project button, Plainly expects no changes when it comes to parametrized layers. You can change the source file, their animation and similar, but you can’t delete them or change them. If you do, however, delete or change those layers you need to delete them from the parametrized layers list and save the template again. If you change a name of a parametrized layer, delete it from the parametrized layers list, save the template and add the parametrization to the layer again.

If you’re experiencing an FFmpeg encoding error, it’s usually caused when unsupported encoding parameters are provided. Please make sure that you’re using the correct encoding parameters for your project. Check the FFmpeg error log and the FFmpeg command arguments to see what went wrong.

You can read more about FFmpeg and it’s encoding at official FFmpeg documentation.

If you’re experiencing a failed render with a Download assets failed error, it’s usually caused by the inability to download the assets from the provided URLs. Please make sure that the URLs provided in the project are correct and accessible.

If you’re experiencing a failed render with an Import assets failed error, it’s usually caused by After Effects being unable to import asset files due to an incorrect asset file extension or unsupported file type.

When you submit a render request, we check all the assets and, if they are valid, proceed with the rendering process. Our validation steps include, in order of priority:

If all of these check fail, the asset validation will fail, and your render will become invalid. However, there are cases when the validation check passes, but the rendering process fails due to an incorrect asset file extension or an invalid asset type.

Here are a few examples:

An example of the error:

If you are experiencing a failed render with a Script action wrong layer type error, it’s usually caused by the wrong layer type being used in the script action. Please make sure that the target layer type is correct.

If you are experiencing a failed render with a Script root comp not allowed error, it’s usually caused by the provided script, trying to be applied the root composition. Please make sure that the provided script is not trying to be applied to the root composition.

If you are experiencing a failed render with a Script layer not found error, it’s usually caused by the provided script, trying to be applied to a layer that does not exist. Please make sure that the provided script is trying to be applied to the correct layer.

If you are experiencing a failed render with a Script composition not found error, it’s usually caused by the provided script, trying to be applied to a composition that does not exist. Please make sure that the provided script is trying to be applied to the correct composition.

If you encounter a Fonts invalid error during rendering, this is a safeguard against producing a poor-quality video. This issue can occur if the original font does not support certain characters in the new text, such as Arabic letters. Occasionally, this error may also appear in some projects for unknown reasons.

Right now we only support English characters. If you have non-English characters in your asset names, or any file you upload to Plainly you will probably get a failed analysis or render.

When applying scripts, make sure that you don’t apply duplicate scripts to the same layer.

Sometimes, even if the analysis goes through that doesn’t exclude the option that you selected wrong After Effects version. Double check that you selected the correct AE version during project upload.

Adding unsupported asset files in your After Effects project, or sending them during render will always cause a failed render. For example, .mov media or assets in HEVC and HEIC formats are not supported.

As a rule of thumb, make sure you’re using .jpg / .png / .mp4 / .mp3 and .wav files. These are enough to cover all your needs.

If you’re experiencing issues with audio, try using .wav files instead of .mp3.

It’s always a good idea to convert any Illustrator / Photoshop files into .png and .jpg.

If you don’t see your fonts in the final render, double check if you added the right font files in your .zip during the custom project upload. See Font Management for more info.

In very rare occasions, a certain AE effect will cause issues. If you went through the whole list from above, and you are still experiencing failed renders or analysis you probably have a certain AE effect in your custom project that’s causing an issue. Go through your project, turn off effects and troubleshoot them one by one.

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