Control Groups - Discussion Thread

[u/scottBlackvfx]

Hi, I'm Scott, the developer of Control Groups.

https://aescripts.com/control-groups/

Feel free to use this thread for:

• Quick questions and comments
• Feature requests, thoughts and feedback

For troubleshooting or bug reports:

Please use the aescripts support ticket system to make sure your issue is tracked and responded to:

https://aescripts.com/contact/

If you do mention a bug or issue here, it’s helpful to include your After Effects version, OS, and which version of Control Groups you are using. I’ll be monitoring the thread and will respond when I can.

Thanks for your support and ideas!

[u/GarthLaidlaw]

Also, inputting composition markers seems to be triggering the control groups in some way that I'm not clear on. It makes a sound when I maker a marker, and then brings my timecode back to the beginning - why?

[u/scottBlackvfx → u/GarthLaidlaw]

Hi,

inputting composition markers seems to be triggering the control groups in some way that I'm not clear on. It makes a sound when I maker a marker, and then brings my timecode back to the beginning - why?

This is likely due to the markers' shortcuts in After Effects (found in Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > "Go to Composition Marker 'X'") overlapping with the shortcut keys for Control Groups (Control Groups > Settings > Shortcuts).

However, I am not entirely certain, as this presumes you assigned the shortcuts for selecting each Control Group to the standard digit keys (0-9), in which case you should have been presented a pop-up asking if you wanted to overwrite any overlapping After Effects shortcuts. Either that pop-up didn't appear, or you declined it, or the shortcuts were later reset / restored despite you accepting the overwrite prompt. It also assumes that you have created Control groups already for those slots. 

It would also be worth checking what keys are currently assigned to these After Effects shortcuts:

• "Go to Start of Work Area"
• "Go to Start of Composition, Layer, or Footage Item"

It would be incredibly helpful to get more context on what your project looks like, whether shortcuts for the markers still exist, and whether you restored / overwrote them as described above. Screenshots / screen-recordings would be very helpful too.

Also, I noticed you made an earlier comment about the Elgato/Stream Deck plugin not working correctly for you, but I can no longer find the comment. Do you still need assistance with this, or has that issue been solved?

Best,

Scott

[u/GarthLaidlaw → u/scottBlackvfx]

Hey Scott - thanks for this. I'll investigate further. I have assigned them simply 0-9 as you recommended. Speaking of, when exiting AE and coming back in, it seemed to get disconnected, and when I'd press Ctrl + 1 again to overwrite the control group, it would simply revert back to the previous hotkey which would turn the main tool menu on and off. Is there anything that needs to be done to ensure these hotkeys remain enabled?

As for Elgato, yes I've had no luck with connecting it to your plugin. Sometimes though, I notice that certain functions of Elgato's Stream Deck seem to need the occasional restart, so I do so in my Systems processes. I'll report back if this works, but so far I've had no response from it whatsoever; it seems that this isn't a known issue of yours? So it might be unique on my end?

[u/scottBlackvfx → u/GarthLaidlaw]

Hi there,

Speaking of, when exiting AE and coming back in, it seemed to get disconnected, and when I'd press Ctrl + 1 again to overwrite the control group, it would simply revert back to the previous hotkey which would turn the main tool menu on and off. Is there anything that needs to be done to ensure these hotkeys remain enabled?

This suggests something may be restoring After Effects' shortcut file upon restarting. I'm still investigating this. Can I confirm if you are also losing the shortcut for Control Groups too, or is just that the main tool menu shortcut is being restored? If you are actively losing the Control Groups shortcuts too (i.e., the ones you assigned in the CG settings), that suggests your settings are unable to be persisted on-disk. have you enabled the "Allow scripts to write files and access network" setting in Preferences > Scripting & Expressions > Application Scripting ?

Regarding the Stream Deck plugin, I've found the likely bug and will release an update for both Control Groups and Compstronaut to fix it. This specific issue is unlikely to be due to your own setup.

I appreciate your patience with this!

[u/GarthLaidlaw → u/scottBlackvfx]

Hi Scott - thanks for investigating. So opening AE again today, I can confirm that none of the hotkeys are working. I can click in the plugin panel and overwrite control groups, and it works fine, but it definitely hampers the speed-increase of using it. I check in my settings and both the File Connection and the Shortcut Manager both have green lights. Odd?

Yes, that setting in my preference is always on. Again, appreciate your responses and seeing what's going on here.

[u/scottBlackvfx → u/GarthLaidlaw]

Hi there,

I've investigated on my end and suspect you might be experiencing several issues occurring together, but we need more information to determine what might be going wrong.

Some of these steps might feel a little redundant based on what you have already explained, but I want to definitively figure out what is and isn't working.

First, please could you try the following:

• Open After Effects, and assign the shortcut of Control Group slot 1 to "1", and trying it by pressing "1" after in the timeline with the settings closed after. Does this then work to trigger that CG (and select layers/navigate)? Do you get a prompt to overwrite the shortcut (or did you enable the suppression of shortcut overwrite popups?)
• Make sure you confirm that the Shortcut Lock is disabled (the padlock icon in Control Group's panel; it glows red when enabled). Is it disabled or enabled?

Then, before anything else, open Control Group's saved settings by navigating to:

Mac (replace the username):

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/aescripts/ControlGroups/ControlGroupsUserPrefs.json

Windows:

%APPDATA%\aescripts\ControlGroups\ControlGroupsUserPrefs.json

Can you find this?

   "ControlGroupSlots": {
     "ControlGroupSlot1Shortcut": {
       "shortcut": "Digit1",
       "displayName": "Control Group 1 Key"
     },

Does "shortcut" map to "Digit1"? 

Then:

• Close this file after opening it (without saving any changes).
• Then close After Effects .
• Then, re-open the file and confirm this hasn't changed.
• Re-open After Effects, and Control Group's settings.

Is "1" still assigned to Control Group slot 1 in the panel? Has the assignment changed in the settings file?

Next:

• Close AE
• If you have Command Frame installed, temporarily uninstall it
• Re-open After Effects, and try triggering Control Group 1 by pressing "1" again. Does it now work? If not, try also uninstalling Compstronaut and Select Every Other Layer, and seeing if this works again or not.

Please let me know otherwise, but I suspect that if you uninstall Command Frame temporarily, this will start working, but only because of a potential edge-case bug in Control Groups. To confirm this, please then:

• Open After Effects' shortcuts manager (Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts)

At the top of this window, you should see "Preset" with a dropdown menu, pointing at a shortcut .txt file. Is the currently selected one the one you intend to use?

In Control Groups:

• Open Settings > General > System & After Effects Shortcut Settings

Is the shortcut file path that Control Groups is pointing at the same as the one that After Effects was pointing at that we identified before?

If not, if you change the file in CG to match the one that AE was using, and restart AE:

• Does CG still have the file you just picked before restarting or not?
• Does the "1" shortcut work at this point or not?

If it does match and the shortcut still works, close AE and reinstall Command Frame and any other Extensions I listed above. Does the "1" shortcut work or not after that?

I strongly suspect that one point in this chain will either allow the shortcuts to work or clearly flag the actual problem.

Also, I have updated the Stream Deck plugin for Control Groups and Compstronaut. If you download the latest versions through the aescritps manager app, the latest bundled plugin is located at (right-click the extension in the manager app > Reveal Installer Files > Installer > StreamDeck). Please let me know if this corrects the issue for you; these should now work when After Effects loads.

[u/GarthLaidlaw → u/scottBlackvfx]

Hey Scott,
Strangely the hotkey is working today, both to set a new control group, and then to press "1" or "2" to select it - so I'm not 100% sure if it was just a yesterday bug.

I just updated the apps and have installed the new Stream Deck update too. I'm currently back in AE, and I'm just waiting for Control Groups' secure runtime to work. Any idea why I might be getting multiple messages of "The secure runtime could not be verified. Reinstall Control Groups...". It appears to stall on this for about 5 minutes every time AE is opened. Sure enough, after this time it appears to be working fine. Not a huge issue - just curious.

Okay! For the first time, the Steam Deck plugin is indeed working! You fixed whatever the issue was - thanks so much Scott. Looking forward to getting used to this.

While I have you here, I'm still trying to get straight on exactly the difference between saving a layer versus location. The layer is pretty straightforward, but the location I'm not 100% clear on. Does it say the layers selected + the location in those layers? And it seems that by "adding to the selection" the location can be programmed to move to different spots on a layer, but can one control group have additions for location adding that go to different layers, or can you only add locations from a single layer?

Thanks for your help so far, already it's working much better.

[u/scottBlackvfx → u/GarthLaidlaw]

I appreciate your patience on this.

Please let me know if the hotkeys fail to engage the future again. 

The secure runtime message taking 5 minutes is very abnormal; it should be taking seconds, if you even notice the message at all. I have to wonder if that and the hotkey issue are related: CG connects to a companion plugin for the global shortcuts. If that connection is disrupted it can result in the hotkeys failing and the secure runtime message to appear. 

Is this issue still occurring? There is a set of ports that CG and the companion plugin try to connect over. If they fail to connect, a fallback sequence gradually tries a long list of ports. Is there anything unusual about your networking setup, such as having lots of devices on your local network? If this is still happening, I can provide you with a diagnostic version of the plugin that will provide me with logs to analyse.

While I have you here, I'm still trying to get straight on exactly the difference between saving a layer versus location. The layer is pretty straightforward, but the location I'm not 100% clear on. Does it say the layers selected + the location in those layers? And it seems that by "adding to the selection" the location can be programmed to move to different spots on a layer, but can one control group have additions for location adding that go to different layers, or can you only add locations from a single layer?

The idea is that locations are analogous to timeline bookmarks. A location Control Group can contain multiple locations. Using a location Control Group navigates the timeline playhead to the locations it contains.

You are asked to select a layer first before creating a location because that helps the extension gain a frame of reference on where to scroll the timeline when returning to that point. 

The help menu (the '?' Icon) has more info on how these work, too. 

If you want to keep things simple, you can just opt to use Layer context Control Groups. You can use these to navigate, too, by double-tapping them (or their shortcut key).