I went through a similar process trying to figure this out. What I landed was creating a .command file like you did, saving it, then running a command line command to give that .command file execution permissions. Then doing a second command line command to run that file. It's a little convoluted, b...

Sounds like you need an expression that calculates the distance in 3d space from the camera to the layer in question. Hopefully this equation helps you: Define your two points. Point 1 at (x1, y1, z1) and Point 2 at (x2, y2, z2). xd = x2-x1 yd = y2-y1 zd = z2-z1 Distance = SquareRoot(xd*xd + yd*yd +...

I don't think there's any good way to implement this in the way you'd like without altering AE itself, in which case Adobe feature request is where you'd want to take it. That said, if you wanted to see property values of an object, you could create a text layer and tie it to that property with an e...

Might want to check out Comps from Spreadsheets, located at http://aescripts.com/

I'm not sure if it has exactly the functionality you need, but might work.

If your second method is failing inside after effects with an expected ";" error are you sure that the issue is with your applescript launcher and not the script you are trying to launch? That sounds like the kind of issue you'd run into if there was a syntax issue with the JSX script. I t...

Might want to check out Comps from Spreadsheets, located at http://aescripts.com/

I'm not sure if it has exactly the functionality you need, but might work.

There are two PDF's from Adobe that cover most of what there is to know about scripting with aftereffects. The last link shows you how to launch an AErender node from the command line. Basically what I ended up doing was writing a text file that had my command line command in it, saving it as a '.co...

Personally, I've never had much luck with watch folders. It seems that you need to do a full collect files process for it to work. Maybe the issue isn't your text file but instead the fact that you aren't collecting footage files? I don't use watch folders, instead I have a script that writes a comm...

This might be a silly question, but why do you need the text file? Won't your AE file have all the needed render settings? Also if your project doesn't have any footage, why does it need to be collected?

Yes, for something as basic as telling after effects to run a script from an applescript the scripting guide found here: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/aftereffects/pdfs/aftereffectscs3_scripting_guide.pdf has some useful examples on page 8. Terminal commands ca...

I know very little on how to use this command, but one of the scripts I wrote uses this to activate a ram preview. Best of luck. Let us know how it works.

thisComp.ramPreviewTest("",1,"");

Sounds very possible. I've written a script that does something very similar, only with an XML input instead of a user controlled dialog. The only thing I'm not certain about is finding the out point of footage to trim your comp. Also if you're doing a source replace on footage, won't it trim your f...

I've been noodling on this problem as well. I don't have a complete solution yet, but I thought it might be helpful to share my thought process so far. Rather than use the callSystem method, I'm thinking the best solution is to write a text file temporarily that contains the intended terminal comman...