After Effects Rendering Endpoints

/api/ae/* drives a local Adobe After Effects installation to inspect and render .aep/.aepx project files that live on a board. These power the After Effects feature — inspect a project, render a composition with edits, and place the result back on the board.

All of these require After Effects installed on the same machine. They are Pro features.

Detect After Effects

GET /api/ae/detect

Returns whether AE is installed and the binary path:

{ "installed": true, "binaryPath": "…", "version": "…" }

If installed is false, inspect and render return 400.

Inspect a project

POST /api/ae/projects/inspect
{
  "board_id": "…",
  "element_id": "…"
}

Reads the project (by board element, or by url) and returns its compositions and the editable layers inside them — text layers, media/footage layers, and expressions. Read-only; nothing is modified.

Render a composition

POST /api/ae/projects/render
{
  "board_id": "…",
  "element_id": "…",
  "composition": "Comp 1",
  "textEdits":       [ … ],
  "mediaEdits":      [ … ],
  "expressionEdits": [ … ],
  "addLayers":       [ … ],
  "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "fps": 30,
  "output_format": "auto",
  "preset_id": null, "preset_name": null
}

Applies the edits to a copy of the project, renders the chosen composition with AE’s renderer, and places the finished video on the board. Pass preset_id/preset_name to load a saved input set (explicit edits in the request override the preset).

Background render jobs

POST /api/ae/render-jobs        →  { "id": "aejob_…", "status": "queued", … }
GET  /api/ae/render-jobs/{job_id}  →  job status / progress / result

Queues a render as a background job and polls its progress, so a long render does not block the request. Used by the After Effects preview render path.

Input presets

GET    /api/ae/projects/presets?board_id=…&element_id=…
POST   /api/ae/projects/presets   { "board_id":"…", "element_id":"…", "name":"…", "composition":"…", "inputs": { … } }
DELETE /api/ae/projects/presets/{preset_id}?board_id=…&element_id=…

Save, list, and delete named input presets per project element so a configuration can be re-rendered later — by you or by an agent. See Agentic Rendering.

A separate, draft set of endpoints under /api/integrations/after-effects/* serves the Adobe CEP panel and is documented in After Effects Endpoints.

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