FilesGuru: Collect Files, Find Missing Footage & Organize After Effects Projects

FilesGuru is an After Effects extension that collects files, finds missing footage across your PC, relinks it and organizes your project panel in one click.

Footage gets imported from everywhere: Downloads, the Desktop, a USB drive. Then you move the project and get the warning "files are missing since you last saved this project." FilesGuru fixes that for good. It copies every file your project uses into an Assets folder next to your .aep, relinks the footage to those copies, and sorts the Project panel into clear, numbered folders.

A better alternative to File › Dependencies › Collect Files: no duplicated project, no manual relinking, no hunting for missing files one by one.

Features

• Collect & Organize in one click. Copy, relink and sort your whole project at once.
• Find missing footage automatically. Searches by file name in your project folder, Downloads and Desktop, then your user folder, then every drive, including USB and network drives. Stops as soon as everything is found.
• Relink footage to the collected copies, including image sequences.
• Organize the Project panel into 01_Main Comps, 02_Precomps, 03_Assets, 04_Solids and 05_Unused.
• Sort assets by type on disk: Footage, Audio, Images, Vectors, 3D, Data.
• Scan project. See what's outside the project, what's missing, and how much will be copied, before changing anything.
• Safe to run again. Originals are never moved or deleted, and nothing is copied twice.
• One undo. Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z reverts the relinking and folder moves in one step.

Perfect for

• Sending an After Effects project to a client, a teammate or a render farm
• Moving a project to another computer or an external drive
• Archiving finished projects so they open years later with no missing files
• Cleaning up messy templates and inherited projects

Requirements: Adobe After Effects CC 2019 (v16) or later, Windows or macOS.

Included: FilesGuru.zxp extension, PDF user guide and install instructions.

How to install

1. Close After Effects.
2. Open the free ZXP Installer (aescripts.com/learn/zxp-installer).
3. Drag FilesGuru.zxp onto the ZXP Installer window.
4. Start After Effects and go to Window › Extensions › FilesGuru.
5. Turn on Edit › Preferences › Scripting & Expressions › Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network.

FAQ

How do I find missing footage in After Effects automatically? Run FilesGuru with "Find missing footage" on. It searches your PC by file name and relinks everything it finds.

Does FilesGuru delete my original files? No. It only copies files. Your originals stay where they are.

Is it better than Collect Files? Collect Files makes a copy of the whole project. FilesGuru makes your current project self-contained, relinks it and organizes it in one step.