DataDriver is an After Effects extension that turns one rigged comp into hundreds of personalized renders — straight from a spreadsheet. An optional browser companion speeds up data prep and per-row preview before you queue the batch.
1 rig · 96 variations · ~40 minutes on an M2 Max.
The panel does the work. The companion makes the loop faster.
CEP extension · the core product
Lives inside After Effects and does the actual rendering. Point it at a CSV or Google Sheet and it churns out one finished comp per row.
Rigs text, images, color palettes, footage, audio, effects, and visibility against data columns. Smart text-fit, focal-point cropping, time rules, and named render profiles. Works on its own — no companion required.
Browser · localhost · optional
Where you tidy up your spreadsheet, drag columns onto layers, and flip through every row before AE touches a frame.
Localhost-only Next.js app. Connects CSV / Google Sheets / REST sources, runs fixed-menu transforms with live before-after, and produces a styled-proof per-row preview. Hands a campaign artifact to the panel via a filesystem bridge — no cloud round-trip.
Nine things DataDriver gets out of your way.
Tag any layer in your AE comp — text, image, color, footage, audio, even visibility — and it becomes a slot a spreadsheet column can fill.
Non-destructive pseudo-effect rigging across all primary layer types. Original comp untouched; rigs persist in project state and survive panel reload.
One rig, every format. Same comp ships as 1:1, 16:9, 9:16, and 4:5 without re-rigging.
Spatial layout engine with attachment rules and safe-area constraints. Resize a comp; layers reflow according to their declared anchoring.
Long names don't blow out. Short names don't look lonely. Faces don't get cropped at the eyebrows.
Text-fit modes (shrink / balance / wrap) plus focal-point image cropping with optional face detection. Per-layer fit rules survive aspect changes.
A "Brand B" column flips every color in the comp at once. No copy-pasting hex values between layers.
Per-row palette / theme selection. Define swatches once; rig color-bound layers to the palette; pick a palette per row from a column.
Some rows need an extra two seconds. Some need to start later. The spreadsheet decides.
Per-row in/out point shifts driven by data columns. No keyframe gymnastics, no comp duplication.
Every render is saved with the row that made it. Rewind a week, re-render a column, see what changed.
Render history persisted alongside source row data; campaign forks for experimental data variations without losing the original.
Bring your own data. CSV. A Google Sheet you keep editing live. Even a Marp Markdown deck.
First-class connectors for CSV, Google Sheets (web-owned OAuth, PKCE, refresh tokens stay local), REST endpoints (flat JSON arrays), and Marp .md decks parsed by the panel. No Airtable in v1.
Catches the broken image link, the missing column, and the mistyped row before AE wastes an hour rendering them.
Companion validates column mapping completeness, image URL reachability (server-side HEAD, CORS-immune), and schema coverage. Writes a campaign artifact the panel ingests — no real-time mirror in v1.
No more comp_001.mp4. Bake column values straight into the output filename — {{market}}_{{product}}_{{date}}.mp4 becomes Berlin_DanceShoes_2026-Q4.mp4 automatically. The DAM, S3 bucket, and social scheduler all get the right filename on the first pass — no producer renaming 96 files at midnight.
Per-campaign filename templates with {{column}} interpolation. Path-sanitization handles unsafe chars (slashes, colons, spaces → underscores). Collision detection warns if two rows would render to the same name. Template lives with the rig, not the data — swap the dataset, names update.
“The panel turned a two-day render pass into forty minutes, and it's the first thing I install on a new machine. The companion is a nice add-on when the data is messy — but the panel earns its place on its own.”
M. Rossi · senior motion designer · Studio Brif
Built for batches like these.
DataDriver is in early access. Request an invite and we'll set you up with the panel — and the companion if you want it.