A client asks for the ad in three languages and the real work is not the creative, it is the bookkeeping. You hunt through every comp for text layers, copy each line out, paste it into a translator, paste the result back, and pray you did not miss a lower third buried in a nested comp. Then you save a version per language and try to keep them in sync when a line changes late. None of that is design. It is version-control busywork, and it is brutal on a deadline.
TextPilot takes that off your plate. It is a Filmit plugin for After Effects that reads every text line in your project, and its Translate tab can convert the whole thing into another language in one pass. This guide follows the demo above, from install to translating an entire project into Spanish, then hot-swapping it between languages whenever you need them.
This video may reference an older version of TextPilot. Features and UI may have changed since recording.
What is TextPilot?
TextPilot is a full text manager that lives inside After Effects. Click Scan Project and it reads every text line across your comps and analyzes the lot, then hands you a list view of all of it. From there you get a Jump function to find any line in the project, an edit-and-Apply flow to update a single line, and a bulk updater for changing many at once.
Around that core sit the rest of the tools: export to CSV or TXT for bulk edits or to show a client, search and replace, a font manager, a spell checker, and the Translate tab. Translation is the one this guide is about, but it is one feature in a panel built to handle all the text in a project.
How to install and open TextPilot
TextPilot installs through Filmit Studio, the desktop app you download from your dashboard. Think of Filmit Studio as Creative Cloud for these plugins: it is how you install, update, and manage the whole suite. TextPilot and every other tool are included, with a 7-day free trial, so you do not buy the plugin on its own. The suite updates weekly, so you stay current without chasing downloads.
Once it is installed, open After Effects and go to Window, then Extensions, then TextPilot. If After Effects was already running when you installed, close and reopen it first. The panel opens docked like any other extension, ready to scan.
Scan your project
Everything starts with one button. Click Scan Project and TextPilot walks every comp, reads each text line, and analyzes it all, then lists every line it found in one place. This is the map the rest of the panel works from, so it is always the first step.
With the list in front of you, the everyday tools come into play. Jump takes you straight to any line in the project so you are not hunting through comps. Edit a line and click Apply to push that change back onto the layer, or reach for the bulk updater when a lot of lines need to change together. Export to CSV or TXT when you want to make bulk edits in a spreadsheet or send the script to a client for sign off.
Pro Tip: Run Scan Project again any time you add or change comps. The list is only as complete as your last scan, so a quick rescan makes sure a late lower third does not get left out of a translation.
The Translate tab
Open the Translate tab and the first thing to do is set your starting point. Use Auto Detect to English and TextPilot saves your English state, while the Original state keeps your untouched starting text safe underneath. Those two saved states are what let you move between languages later without losing where you began.
The tab works on the same scanned list, so it already knows every line in the project. You are not feeding it text by hand. You pick a language pair, run it, and it works through all the text it found in the scan.
Pro Tip: Save your English state with Auto Detect before you translate anything. That is the clean baseline you swap back to, so you are never trying to rebuild your original wording by hand after the fact.
Translate and hot-swap languages
To translate, pick English to Spanish and click Translate All. It runs quickly across the whole project. Review the results, click Accept All, then Apply All Changes, and TextPilot translates the entire project into Spanish in one go. To go back, swap the language to English and it changes everything back to your saved English state.
Another language works exactly the same way. Pick German and run it through, and the project flips to German. The part that pays off on real jobs is that TextPilot remembers the translations it has made, so once Spanish and German exist you can hot-swap between English, Spanish, and German later without redoing the work. That is the difference between juggling three saved project files and toggling one language on a single project.
No API keys, no per-use cost
Translation like this usually comes with a catch: an API key to set up and a per-character bill that grows with every project. TextPilot does not work that way. There is no API cost and no API key needed. You do not plug in a ChatGPT or Anthropic key, and there is no extra charge on top of your subscription. It just works.
Under the hood it uses a Google-Translate style engine, which is what makes it fast and free to run for you. That is also the reason it stays simple: you click Translate All and review the output, with nothing to configure and no usage meter ticking in the background.
Reviewing translations and the sizing caveat
One honest note on quality. This is a machine translation, not a native one, so it gets you most of the way fast but it is not a substitute for a fluent human. Always have a native speaker review a translation before it ships, especially on a client ad where one awkward phrase undercuts the whole spot.
There is also a layout caveat worth planning for. Translating a sentence can make it longer, so a line that fit perfectly in English may not sit on screen the same way in German. A version-control and project-manager feature is planned to help manage exactly this, which matters most when you are delivering the same ad in three languages and each one frames a little differently.
Pro Tip: After a hot-swap, scrub through the comp once and check your tightest text for overruns. Catching a line that now runs long takes a second on review and saves a re-deliver after the client spots it.
Key takeaways
Click Scan Project and TextPilot reads and lists every text layer across your comps to work from.
Pick a language pair, click Translate All, Accept All, and Apply All Changes to convert every line.
TextPilot remembers each translation, so you can toggle one project between English, Spanish, and German.
It runs a Google-Translate style engine with no ChatGPT or Anthropic key and no extra charge.
It is a machine translation, and longer sentences can overrun, so check the wording and the fit before you deliver.
Get started with Filmit
TextPilot installs through Filmit Studio, the free app that manages every Filmit plugin for After Effects and Premiere Pro. One install puts TextPilot in your editor with a 7-day free trial, and the suite updates weekly so you stay current.
And once your text is localized, pair TextPilot with Credits, another After Effects text tool in the suite that builds a finished credit roll from a panel or a spreadsheet. It is part of the same bundle, so TextPilot, Credits, and every other plugin run under one subscription.
