Open an After Effects project without After Effects
Open an .aep file as an editable project
An .aep file normally opens in After Effects and nowhere else. Premation reads .aep and .aepx directly and converts the project into its own document, with a report of what was lost. It is a conversion, not a round trip, and shape-layer contents do not convert yet.
Free · AGPL-3.0-only · macOS & Windows
How to do it
- 01
File ▸ Open After Effects Project…
Choose the .aep or .aepx. The import starts a new untitled project, so saving never writes over the file After Effects still needs.
- 02
Read the import report
If everything came across you get a short notice. Otherwise the report opens with the counts, then lists each thing that did not survive.
- 03
Relink missing footage
Footage is relinked by file name where it can be found. The files it could not find are named in the report; use Relink on those assets.
- 04
Fix what the report lists
Shape layers arrive as empty groups, animated masks keep their first shape, and expressions are carried as text and not run. Check the result against the original before relying on it.
Questions
- Can Premation save back to .aep?
- No. The conversion is one way: the result is a Premation project, nothing stays linked to the original, and the .aep is never written to.
- Will my expressions work?
- They come across as text on the property that had them, and they are not evaluated on import. Re-enable one to run it here; Premation's expression language is smaller than After Effects' and is not general JavaScript.
- What about third-party plugin effects?
- Effects are matched to Premation's own by name. One with no equivalent is skipped, and the report says how many and which.