The Problem

Chances are high, that you found yourself in this situation at some time:
You open a project in After Effects and a couple of files are missing. Maybe you got the setup from someone else and some files were not collected correctly or you restored a project from LTO or some other archive, but not all necessary files were restored.

Of course you can easily search for all missing footage with After Effects native tools. However passing this information to someone else can be a bit tricky.

 

The Solution

I therefore wrote this little script that searches for all missing files and prints them to a text file. You can then pass this file to the person in charge of getting those missing files.

The latest script version and installation instructions can be found in the GitHub repository.

Open GitHub Repository 
/* 
This script searches for missing footage and prints them to a text file.

created: 19.04.2023
last modified: 19.04.2023
version: v0.1.0
written by claus steinmassl | www.claus-steinmassl.com
copyright (c) 2023, claus steinmassl

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.


*/


#target aftereffects

// Prompt the user to choose a folder for the output file
var outputFolder = Folder.selectDialog("Choose a folder for the output file");

// If the user cancelled the dialog, exit the script
if (outputFolder == null) {
    alert("No output folder selected.");
    exit();
}

// Define the output file path and name based on the current After Effects project
var outputFilePath = outputFolder.fsName + "/" + app.project.file.name.replace(/\.[^\.]+$/, "") + ".txt";

// Create an empty array to store the list of missing media files
var missingMedia = [];

// Loop through all items in the project
for (var i = 1; i <= app.project.numItems; i++) {
    var item = app.project.item(i);
    
    // Check if the item is a footage item and if it's missing
    if (item instanceof FootageItem) {
        if(item.mainSource.missingFootagePath) {
            missingMedia.push(item.mainSource.missingFootagePath);
        }
    }
}

// Remove duplicate file paths from the array
missingMedia = missingMedia.filter(function(elem, index, self) {
    return index === self.indexOf(elem);
});

// Sort the list of missing media
missingMedia.sort();

// Create a new file object with the output file path
var outputFile = new File(outputFilePath);

// Open the file in write mode
outputFile.open("w");

// Write the missing media list to the file
outputFile.write(missingMedia.join("\n"));

// Close the file
outputFile.close();

// Alert the user that the file has been saved
alert("Missing media file list saved to " + outputFilePath);
Open GitHub Repository