Programmatic Video
Video as Code
Stop using manual editors. Our developer-first API is the most flexible way to create videos with code. Make videos programmatically using a simple and powerful JSON-based API.
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Stop using manual editors. Our developer-first API is the most flexible way to create videos with code. Make videos programmatically using a simple and powerful JSON-based API.
Start for FreeIn modern development, we treat everything as code: infrastructure, deployments, and security. So why is video creation still stuck in the past, reliant on manual GUI tools?
This bottleneck stops you from being able to make videos programmatically and scale your content. You can't trigger a new video render from an event, you can't version control an edit, and you can't build a self-serve video feature for your users. You need a solution that treats video like a first-class, programmable resource.
It would have a ton of research on what technologies we needed to leverage technically to achieve the desired outcome. This would have taken at least two months of engineering time for a simple use case, and up to 6 months if the scope widened.
Shotstack is the video editing API built to solve this problem. A simple JSON to video workflow gives you full programmatic control over every element: every clip, track, title, transition, and filter.
Send an API request with your JSON, and our cloud-based rendering engine builds your video and delivers a broadcast-ready MP4. It’s a predictable, stateless, and powerful way to build video applications.
Start for Free Talk to an ExpertDefine your edits as declarative JSON templates. You can generate videos from a template and any data source: a database, a CSV, a headless CMS, or a user-submitted form. It’s the ultimate flexible workflow for programmatic video editing and allows you to build features within your applications within days.
Build a feature to automate video creation in your Node.js backend, run batch jobs with a Python script, or trigger renders from a serverless function. If your stack can send an HTTP request, you can create video with Shotstack.
Don't build your own rendering farm. Our fully managed infrastructure scales with you. Go from one render to millions without managing a single server or FFmpeg instance. Focus on your application's logic, not on video processing infrastructure.
This application is the perfect example of a well executed and documented API. In less than 10 mins, set up, web hook done, and first render!
There are a couple of other options out there that attempt to provide the same or similar solution, but none of them come close in terms of quality, ease of use, and speed.
Shotstack was EXACTLY what I was looking for, and incredibly easy to get started with. You guys are killing it.
A video editing API is a cloud-based service that lets you create videos using code instead of a manual editor. You send an API request with instructions—in our case, a JSON file—that describes the video you want to build. This JSON file defines all the assets (clips, images, audio) and their timings. Our service then renders this into a final MP4 video file and returns it to you, all without you managing any servers.
Think of FFmpeg as an extremely powerful and versatile (but complex) command-line tool. Shotstack is a fully managed service that can serve as an FFmpeg alternative. While you could build your own FFmpeg API, you'd be responsible for the infrastructure: managing servers, handling job queues, scaling for large renders, and dealing with failures. We handle all of that DevOps complexity for you, providing a reliable, scalable, and simple REST API on top.
Yes, we provide official SDKs for Node.js, Python, PHP, and Ruby to make integration seamless. However, because Shotstack is a language-agnostic REST API, you can use it with any language that can make an HTTP request.
Yes, our API gives you granular control to add text to video programmatically. You can specify the font, size, color, position, animation, and precise timing for any text element. This is perfect for dynamically adding titles, lower-thirds, subtitles, or personalized messages.
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