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Step 1 - Organization

Take a fast look at Groups and Naming inside Media and Customize sections.

If Placeholders and Controls are well organized go to the next step.

If it's faster to just rename a few things yourself instead of writing about them in a rejection email, do it.

If it's a ton of work, soft reject.

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Organized ✅

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Messy ⛔

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Step 2 - Quick Preview

Play the video, watch it and listen to music. Sometimes there are errors in an audio layer, adjustment layer, edges of the video, black missing frames… Look for unusual things that are clearly errors and look at the overall video and audio quality.

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Step 3 - Placeholder Buttons

Watch the video inside the editor to see Placeholder Button positions and timing. Reject if the fixing takes a long time, if it's just a few corrections, it is faster to fix it yourself. If the project inside .aep is not very well organised, Placeholder Button will not be auto-calculated well.

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Step 4 - Placeholder Types

Check if the placeholders are correct Image Type and Type.

-Media (Images or Videos) must be Image Type: Zoom, Type: Media.

-Media placeholders containing products on sale should be Type: Product Media.

-Logos should be Image Type: Fit, Type: Logo.

-Cover Arts (Photos inside squares/circles) should be Image Type: Zoom, Type: Media.

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-Text Type is automatically filled, check if some text is really specific.

All these Placeholder Types will play a big role in the auto-generation of Debug Videos and Examples (Use Cases/Genres).

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Step 5 - Text Placeholders

Look at Debug Videos and see if there are problems with Text Placeholders regarding Max Width, Max Height and Justification (paragraph). Look for too big or too small Text Leading (line spacing) and

generally overlapping with other graphical elements.

Inside Debug Videos, there is a Custom Values Test with Numbering, that will replace all Text Placeholders values to a number they are ordered inside the Media tab. This can be used to debug Text Placeholders order inside groups, but this rarely needs any attention. More about Text/Media Placeholder orders follow.

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Step 6 - Media Placeholders

Watch Media Placeholders order inside Debug Videos. If they are well organized inside the Media section from top to bottom, Test Media Number will appear in the right order (1,2,3…)

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If you notice that Test Media Number is not good, hover above Placeholder Button and read the name. If the name is the same as a Test Media Number, then the placeholder is badly positioned inside the Media group and just needs to be placed in the right group. After you click Rerender Debug Videos inside Debug Videos, Media placeholders should be in good order.

If you hover above that problematic placeholder and names are not matching, then the author names/renamed that Media Placeholder badly, so it is placed in the wrong folder.

Check if the Audio from the Media Placeholders is muted or not. Usually, they are always muted or should be muted. They are automatically muted when added inside Videobolt Tempalter. They are only turned on if the author chooses to turn them on. You will hear a repeating voice inside debug videos: “Video Placeholder is not muted.” if the video is not muted.

Check Starting Time of Media Placeholders. They should start from 0 seconds or 0 frames.

You can see problems with Media Placeholder Types and Image Types. If they are wrong, the Media will Fit/Zoom incorrectly. If you fix it, you must click Rerender Debug Video.

Step 7 - Customize

Check if colors from the video are not connected to a color control via Color Test Debug Video.

Check documentation for more information about Controls rules. Frequent mistakes following.

Check these 3 control names and add them to Basic Controls (Effect Group):

Logo or Text

Original Logo Colors

Logo Color

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They are added by default if they are named correctly inside After Effects.

Select Type of Original Logo Colors to ON if original logo colors are visible on Debug Videos. Select OFF if the Logo is painted by default. (It is frequent in Gold and Silver types of templates.)

Add “interesting” controls to the Basic Controls (Effect Group). Interesting controls are Dropdowns, Checkboxes, Angles, Points and Sliders which have major effects on templates.

Check if there are some unnecessary colors added by the author. Only colors with the control that enables its influence is ok to put inside Basic Controls. Example: Colorize Template Checkbox Control and Template Color Control.

Step 8 - Color Scheme

Adjust Color Clusters sorted by hue. (Dark, Midtone and Bright Orange colors should be grouped together.) It’s working well usually automatically, but a few tweaks are somewhere needed. Usually darkest or brightest colors with different hues are placed automatically inside the same color cluster, but that is wrong. If you were to rise brightness and saturation of those clusters (Cluster “Color 3” from the Bad Image bellow) colors would be different hues.

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Good ✅

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Bad ⛔

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Step 9 - Hue Changer

You can use a Hue Changer to debug further color controls if they are troublesome.

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Step 10 - Render Statistics

Report if you notice high Render Times. Templates will not pass upload if they have long render times, but sometimes authors can add a control that significantly lowers the speed of render.

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Step 11 - Audio

Soundtrack can be added or replaced later if the template doesn’t have it.

Audio Debug Soundtrack can be heard inside Debug Videos.

Audio Debug Voiceover is: "Audio Start, 1, 2, 3...98,99,100."

Prohibited use of the Audio Placeholders:

Start of the Master Audio in the video should always start from "Audio Start" exactly at the video start.

End of the video should always have a hearable Audio Debug Soundtrack, until the video finishes.

Silence is not good. If the user replaces that audio file, it will have a cut like the original audio layer.

If in the middle of the video there is a skip like this: “…3,4,5,15,16…” it often means that the audio layer is duplicated and trimmed.

If you hear Original Audio with Audio Debug together, audio layer is not added as a Audio Placeholder.

If you hear multiple Audio Debugs with the offset in time, it is probably your second audio layer (SFX) and that is ok. If it’s not, then you added duplicated audio layer.

We can tolerate fade in and fade out and creative manipulation of the audio like Audio Glitching, Rewinding, Lowering Bass to imitate walkie-talkie…

Advice is not to animate Audio Level, maybe some users will want just their audio unchanged with the video.

For Music Visualizers and Lyrics, both Old and New VB Frequency React will be set to the correct frequency and graphic elements should react as intended inside Debug Videos.

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Good ✅

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Bad ⛔

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Bad ⛔

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How to check if Audio Placeholder is longer than Render Composition:

You should replace Audio Placeholder with the soundtrack from Media Library longer than Render Comp

When you click on the Audio Placeholder duration area, you can see exact duration of Audio Layer

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Step 12 - Themes

Themes and Examples (Use Cases/Genres) are made later by authors.

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If you need to change some placeholder that is not appropriate then you can change it and under the Themes tab, click Render All. It is useful for all placeholders.

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Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.

EditorEditor

Step 1 - Organization

Step 2 - Quick Preview

Step 3 - Placeholder Buttons

Step 4 - Placeholder Types

Step 5 - Text Placeholders

Step 6 - Media Placeholders

Step 7 - Customize

Step 8 - Color Scheme

Step 9 - Hue Changer

Step 10 - Render Statistics

Step 11 - Audio

Step 12 - Themes

Editor
Editor