Plainly User Documentation

There are no special requirements when creating a custom project. You can create it as you would normally create a video in After Effects. We have best practices that you can follow, but other than that you have full control over the template.

After your finish creating your template in After Effects, and you want to add it to Plainly, the first step is to properly package it:

This is how a proper .zip looks:

After you create the .zip you need to go to Custom Projects > Upload New and the upload window will open. Make sure that you correctly select the version of After Effects that you used.

After the upload, Plainly will take a second to analyze your project.

You should then create your templates and add parameters. Templates are a subcategory of a project, and you can have as many templates as you wish in one custom project. The reason why templates exist is to allow you to have multiple variations (for example multiple formats) of one video under one project.

To create a template go to the project page and click on the “Add new” button.

This will open up the parametrization window. In the parametrization window, you will see all of the available layers you can make dynamic. Right now we support dynamic text, video, audio, images and colors. To create a parameter (dynamic layer):

Go through the list of layers, and make the ones you want to change every render dynamic.

You can also add scripts to layers, scripts are a way to add even more dynamic features to your template.

Scripts are features that you can add to certain layers that will make your project even more dynamic. To add them, click on the “Scripting” tab in the parametrization step. Here’s an overview of all scripts (sorted from the most used to the least used by our users):

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.

Scripts can also be applied to compositions.

If you finish your setup (create templates & parameters), start rendering and notice a mistake you can easily update the template without the creation of a new project. Go to your After Effects project, do your edits and click on the “Edit” button on the project page. This will open the same upload form as you saw during the initial upload. Make sure that you select the right version of After Effects.

It’s important to note that you can’t delete any parametrized layers, or edit their names if you want the edit to work. Once we create the map of the dynamic parameters, we expect to see the same map during the upload of the edited project.

If you delete, change sources, or change the names of parametrized layers make sure that you also edit the template. Delete the parametrized layers that you changed, save the template, and then add them again.

After Effects templates for custom have no special requirements, you can simply create your template as you would create any video. We do however have best practices that help you get the best output. These best practices involve formatting of text, formatting of images, proper naming structure, and similar.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at ae@plainlyvideos.com.

Only available on certain Plainly subscription plans.

Sharing links enable you to have static, non-changeable, links for videos rendered in your projects. Since every video rendered has it’s own unique link where it can be downloaded, this feature enables you to have a single link for each project and template. Sharing can operate in two modes:

You can enable sharing by clicking on the Enable sharing button in the project details page. Sharing can be enabled only for the complete project and will affect all templates. The sharing link for each template can be found in the template details page.

Please not that sharing links will become nonfunctional if:

If you want to quickly render out a single video, you can do that through the rendering form in our app. Simply go to the template you want to render, click on the “Render” button in the top right and fill out the parameter fields.

Once you fill out the parameters, and click render that will send one render request to Plainly, and your render will appear in the “Renders” tab (which you can access from the sidebar).

If you want to send a batch of requests to Plainly, but don’t want to use our API you can do this with the batch render. All you have to do is create a CSV with all variations you want to render. Create one column for one parameter, and each row will be a new render.

Once again, go to the render form, and click on the “Batch render” button on the top. Upload your CSV, map columns to parameters, and click render. This will instantly send a request for as many renders as you have rows.

We call tweet-to-video a mini-app. These mini-apps are a collection automations that we created in order to help you get one-click automatic rendering. To use tweet-to-video simply go to the “Designs” tab, find a Twitter template, click render and paste the URL to your tweet.

Plainly will take the data it needs from that tweet, add it into the template and render a video.

Plainly’s API is how you can get the most out of our tool. It’s a powerful API that allows rendering of huge volumes. You can do that with batch rendering, but with the API you have the ability to create even more robust workflows.

Almost all actions you do within our web app can be done through the API. This means that you can set up templates, get render info, and of course render videos through the API.

It’s an easy to use Rest API and you can see the documentation on this link.

Any assets you’re sending to Plainly have to be stored on the cloud, and during the rendering you will be providing a link to that asset. This link has to be public, or signed and if you are not sure if it’s going to work, the easiest way to check is to open the single render form and paste the link in a parameter field.

Plainly will do the asset validation process, and if this is a valid link it wil tell you.

If you create renders with the render form, you can also use our native file upload system. This will allow you to upload files from the local machine, but this system is not available with the API or batch rendering.

We can take Google Drive and Dropbox links but only if you are providing us with the right link. You can get these links by using the Google Drive or Dropbox APIs, just pasting a link that you see in the browser won’t work.

Here are the relevant API docs from Google and Dropbox to see how to get valid links.

Advanced rendering options are accessed through the top right button in the render form. These options allow you to set up different output formats, add a webhook or export thumbnails.

If you get a failed render, which can happen for a lot of reasons we provided you with a simple and quick way to rerender the video, without sending the data again.

You can either render again or re-submit a render through our web app. The render again option will just reuse the same values for parameters…re-submitting a render will reuse the parameters, webhook and advanced rendering options.

You can also resubmit the render using our API, check the relevant docs here.

Many analysis failures are attributable to the same factors that lead to unsuccessful renders. To address this, it is recommended to review the section below and conduct troubleshooting. The focus should primarily be on unsupported file formats and the utilization of non-English characters in asset file names.

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.

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. As a rule of thumb, make sure you’re using .jpg / .png / .mp4 / .mov / .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.

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.