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Editing Videos, Images and Audio

Shotstack provides a framework to automate the editing process for your videos, images and audio and the heavy lifting of rendering thousands of videos concurrently.

Shotstack is useful is in building media based applications and automating workflows where a template can be used and assets created in batches or large volumes.

Key steps to editing media​

Prepare JSON using the Studio​

An edit in Shotstack is defined using JSON which specifies when different assets (images, videos, titles) will appear and play on a timeline. In order to create a video you first need to prepare the JSON data so that it contains the correct assets arranged on the timeline.

You can use the Shotstack Studio to help create this JSON data.

Post JSON to API render endpoint​

Once your have prepared an edit using the Studio you POST the data to the _render endpoint of our API.

Poll render endpoint​

The render process takes approximately 10 seconds for a 30-second video.

Your application needs to poll the API on a regular basis to check the status of the video render by calling the render endpoint with the id of the current render. When the status is done you can proceed to downloading or transferring the video to your application.

Tip

We recommend using webhooks to reduce the number of calls to the API and receive a notification as soon as rendering completes.

Hosting and serving video​

Once a video is finished rendering, it is automatically transferred to the Shotstack hosting service, where it stays until you delete it. Serve it to your users from its CDN URL. The render status response also returns a temporary url that you can download the file from.

Download or transfer the video​

Instead of using the Shotstack hosting service, the video can be fetched from our servers (S3) and transferred to your own application for further processing and hosting.

You may wish to transfer the video to your own S3 or storage service, upload it Google Drive, Vimeo or any of our other destinations.

Hosting is on by default

Your video stays on the Shotstack CDN until you delete it. If you opt out of our hosting service, the temporary url is the only copy and it expires after 24 hours, so download the video before then.