This GIF / YouTube was created with this command: “editly commonFeatures.json5“. See more examples here.

Editly is a tool and framework for declarative NLE (non-linear video editing) using Node.js and ffmpeg. Editly allows you to easily and programmatically create a video from set of clips, images and titles, with smooth transitions between and music overlaid.

Editly has a simple CLI for quickly assembling a video from a set of clips or images, or you can use its more flexible Javascript API.

Inspired by ffmpeg-concat, editly is much faster and doesn’t require much storage because it uses streaming editing. Editly aims to be very extensible and feature rich with a pluggable interface for adding new dynamic content.

Features

• Edit videos with code! Declarative API with fun defaults
• Create colorful videos with random colors generated from aesthetically pleasing pallettes and random effects
• Supports any input size like 4K video and DSLR photos
• Can output to any dimensions and aspect ratio, like Instagram post (1:1), Instagram story (9:16), YouTube (16:9), or any other dimensions you like.
• Content will be scaled and letterboxed automatically, even if input aspect ratio is not same, and framerate will be converted.
• Speeds up / slow down videos automatically to match cutFrom/cutTo segment length with each clip’s duration
• Overlay text and subtitles on videos, images or backgrounds
• Accepts custom HTML5 Canvas / Fabric.js Javascript code for custom screens or dynamic overlays
• Render custom GL shaders (for example from shadertoy)
• Can output GIF

Use cases

• Create a slideshow from a set of pictures with text overlay
• Create a fast paced trailer or promo video
• Create a tutorial video with help text
• Simply convert a video to a GIF
• Resize video to any size or framerate and with automatic letterbox/crop (e.g. if you need to upload a video somewhere but the site complains Video must be 1337x1000 30fps)

See examples

Requirements

• Node.js installed (Recommended to use newest stable version)
• Should work on Windows, MacOS and Linux. Needs at least Node.js v12.16.2 on MacOS (see issue). See also https://github.com/stackgl/headless-gl#system-dependencies

Make sure you have ffmpeg and ffprobe installed and available in PATH

Installing

npm i -g editly

Usage: Command line video editor

Run editly --help for usage

Create a simple randomized video edit from videos, images and text with an audio track:

editly 
  title:'My video' 
  clip1.mov 
  clip2.mov 
  title:'My slideshow' 
  img1.jpg 
  img2.jpg 
  title:'THE END' 
  --fast 
  --audio-file-path /path/to/music.mp3

Or create an MP4 (or GIF) from a JSON or JSON5 edit spec (JSON5 is just a more friendly JSON format):

editly my-editly.json5 --fast --out output.gif

For examples of how to make an JSON edit spec, see below or https://github.com/mifi/editly/tree/master/examples

When you run with --fast or fast: true it will render a much quicker low resolution preview ⏩

By default without --fast it will use the width, height and frame rate from the first input video. all other clips will be converted to these dimensions. You can of course override any or all of these parameters.

TIP: Use this tool in conjunction with LosslessCut

TIP: If you need catchy music for your video, have a look at this YouTube or the YouTube audio library. Then use youtube-dl to download the video, and then point --audio-file-path at the video file. Be sure to respect their license!

Javascript library

const editly = require('editly');

// See editSpec documentation
await editly(editSpec)
  .catch(console.error);

Edit spec

Edit specs are Javascript / JSON objects describing the whole edit operation with the following structure:

{
  outPath,
  width,
  height,
  fps,
  defaults: {
    duration: 4,
    transition: {
      duration: 0.5,
      name: 'random',
    },
    layer: {
      fontPath,
      // ...more layer defaults
    }
  },
  audioFilePath,
  clips: [
    {
      transition,
      duration,
      layers: [
        {
          type,
          // ...more layer specific options
        }
        // ...more layers
      ],
    }
    // ...more clips
  ],

  // Testing options:
  enableFfmpegLog: false,
  verbose: false,
  fast: false,
}

Parameters

Transition types

transition.name can be any of gl-transitions, or any of the following: directional-left, directional-right, directional-up, directional-down and random.

Layer types

See examples and commonFeatures.json5

Layer type ‘video’

For video layers, if parent clip.duration is specified, the video will be slowed/sped-up to match clip.duration. If cutFrom/cutTo is set, the resulting segment (cutTo–cutFrom) will be slowed/sped-up to fit clip.duration.

Layer type ‘image’

Layer type ‘title’

• fontPath – See defaults.layer.fontPath
• text – Title text to show, keep it short
• textColor – default #ffffff
• position – Vertical position: top, bottom or center

Layer type ‘subtitle’

• fontPath – See defaults.layer.fontPath
• text – Subtitle text to show
• textColor – default #ffffff

Layer type ‘title-background’

Title with background

• text – See type title
• textColor – See type title
• background – { type, ... } – See type radial-gradient, linear-gradient or fill-color
• fontPath – See type title

Layer type ‘fill-color’, ‘pause’

• color – Color to fill background, default: randomize

Layer type ‘radial-gradient’

• colors – Array of two colors, default: randomize

Layer type ‘linear-gradient’

• colors – Array of two colors, default: randomize

Layer type ‘rainbow-colors’

🌈🌈🌈

Layer type ‘canvas’

See customCanvas.js

• func – Custom Javascript function

Layer type ‘fabric’

See customFabric.js

• func – Custom Javascript function

Layer type ‘gl’

Loads a GLSL shader. See gl.json5 and rainbow-colors.frag

• fragmentPath
• vertexPath (optional)

Troubleshooting

• If you get Error: The specified module could not be found., try: npm un -g editly && npm i -g --build-from-source editly (see #15)

See also

• https://github.com/transitive-bullshit/awesome-ffmpeg
• https://github.com/h2non/videoshow
• https://github.com/transitive-bullshit/ffmpeg-concat
• https://github.com/sjfricke/awesome-webgl
• https://www.mltframework.org/docs/melt/