Clipboard
There is a very convenient facility in AE developed for copying effects, transformations, or their individual properties, designed to make use of the Windows clipboard. User selects one or more layer properties (here Position and Rotation):
Then, using common menu items , or for clipboard manipulation, cuts or copies selected parameters for pasting them to another layer. The data is stored in the clipboard in an easy and convenient ASCII format. Different AE versions have slighly different formats, but backward compatibility is maintained.
PatchMaker, by imitating AE, can generate data files in AE 5.0 format:
Adobe After Effects 5.0 Keyframe Data
Units Per Second 30
Source Width 720
Source Height 576
Source Pixel Aspect Ratio 1.06667
Comp Pixel Aspect Ratio 1.06667
Position Transform Effect Parameter #2
Frame X pixels Y pixels
40 379.676 274.557
41 379.705 274.878
42 379.616 275.353
...
Commands responsible for generation of description of transformations in this format are and The first command places the description directly in the clipboard, and switches, if possible, to AE window. The second command saves the description in a given file. The contents of this file can subsequently be transferred to the clipboard from any text editor, for example, Notepad.
When the description of transformations is placed to the clipboard, AE user just has to select a composition layer to which the transformations are to be applied, move the current time indicator to the first frame which is to be transformed by the first transformation stored in the clipboard, and choose .
After copying transformations from previous figure to another layer of the same kind, you should see the following picture:
If we compare the clipboard transfer to another ways of transferring data from PatchMaker, it is necessary to note that the responsibility of positioning the first frame yields in convenience to the direct communication via plug-in. In the other hand, if you are using AE version below 6.0, this way may be the fastest. It can also help you if you want to transfer data to another applications that understand «Adobe After Effects 5.0 Keyframe Data».
