Getting existing value of slider to set into variable

Technical Support
#1

I can set the value of a slider via AT, but can’t work out how to find the value of a slider and then store it as a variable. Have I missed a step? I want to be able to manually enter slider values outside of AT and then use those numbers within an automation so setting the value and then storing that within AT won’t work.

FindSliderValue.json (5.5 KB)

PS: I just realised this might be due to the fact we can add keyframes to sliders that then change the value. If this is the case, is it possible to get the value of a certain keyframe set on the slider?

#2

Hi @pennytron, this is possible.
this is a little confusing so I will try to explain it clearly.

when setting up a property in automation toolkit, every property have it’s type (number, text, layer, item, boolean, property) after selecting the property you want to set, automation toolkit gives you the option to select only properties with the same type(text can accept number and boolean) so if the property type is number the “name” property won’t show up because it’s type is text and number won’t accept text.

In your case the problem is the same, when looping on the properties of an effect, there is the “value” property that contains the value, because you are looping through the properties automation toolkit assumes that the “value” property type is by default “text” because it can’t know what is the real type,
so when you tried to set up the number variable “value” property the effect’s “value” text property didn’t show up for the same reason, number can’t accept text.

there are 2 solutions for this problem:

  1. change the variable type to text, then the effect’s “value” property will show up(but you won’t be able use this variable in other number properties or do math).
  2. there is a number variable action called “convert text to number”, the action takes a text and convert to a number and then sets the number as the value of the number variable so you can use this action instead of using the “set” automation line.

if there are keyframes the “value” property will return the value at frame 0, if you want the value at the current time you can set the “time” property to the comp time indicator. if you want the value of a specific keyframe you will need to loop on the “keyframes in property”.

example - FindSliderValue2.json (6.4 KB)
hope this all makes sense,
Alon.

#3

That makes so much sense, thank you! I didn’t even pick up on the text-to-value error. I’ll take a look at both options and see what is best for what I need.

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