Render options

Advanced rendering options are accessed through the top right button in the single render form, and can be configured as well using batch rendering, integration-based invocation or API. These options allow you to add captions, export thumbnails, etc.

Captions

To enable captions, go to the Captions section of the Output Format settings and provide the URL to the captions .srt file.

Optionally, you can choose one of pre-defined caption styles, and you can also choose the position where the caption should be displayed. If you don’t provide these options, the Basic option will be used for style, and the position will be at the bottom.

Captions styles

There are five built-in caption styles:

Style	Example	API value
Basic		BASIC
Shadow		BASIC_WITH_SHADOW
Stroke and shadow		BASIC_WITH_STROKE_AND_SHADOW
Poppins white		POPPINS_WHITE
Poppins white vertical	Poppins with adaptations for the story formats (9x16).	POPPINS_WHITE_VERTICAL

Captions position

Currently, the available caption positions are Bottom (default), Center and Top, with API values being BOTTOM, CENTER and TOP.

curl -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -u "[API_KEY]:" \
  -d '{
        "projectId": "[PROJECT_ID]",
        "options": {
          "captions": {
            "srtFileUrl": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/andreyvit/subtitle-tools/master/sample.srt",
            "captionsStyle": "BASIC",
            "captionsPosition": "BOTTOM"
          }
        }
      }' \
  https://api.plainlyvideos.com/api/v2/renders

Thumbnails

With thumbnails option example, Plainly will not only export the video but also thumbnails which you can, for example, use as a poster on social medias.

There are two options on how you can get thumbnails:

• At seconds - you provide exact time points in a video when thumbnails should be taken.
• Frequency - you provide an interval in seconds, and thumbnails will be taken at “every N seconds”.

Thumbnails will be visible in the Render details page, as well as in the Render API model  under thumbnailsUris array field.

Additional options when generating thumbnails are:

curl -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -u "[API_KEY]:" \
  -d '{
        "projectId": "[PROJECT_ID]",
        "options": {
          "thumbnails": {
            "atSeconds": [1, 5, 7],
            "format": "JPG",
            "fromEncodedVideo": true
          }
        }
      }' \
  https://api.plainlyvideos.com/api/v2/renders

Watermark

With watermark option you can pass a link to an image or video, that you want to use as a watermark on the video. Plainly always generates two videos in this case, one with the watermark and one without it.

A watermark video will be available for download on the Render details page. The URL to the video will be available as well as in the Render API model  under outputWatermark field.

Watermark positioning

You can also pass encoding parameters for the watermark. Having encoding params allows controlling on how is watermark added. If not passed, the watermark will be placed in the top left corner of the video.

Here are some examples of encoding parameters that you can use for the watermark:

-filter_complex [1]scale=iw*0.2:-1,format=rgba,colorchannelmixer=aa=0.8[watermark];[0][watermark]overlay=10:10[out] -map [out]

-filter_complex [1]scale=iw*0.2:-1,format=rgba,colorchannelmixer=aa=0.8[watermark];[0][watermark]overlay=W-w-10:10[out] -map [out]

-filter_complex [1]scale=iw*0.2:-1,format=rgba,colorchannelmixer=aa=0.8[watermark];[0][watermark]overlay=10:H-h-10[out] -map [out]

-filter_complex [1]scale=iw*0.2:-1,format=rgba,colorchannelmixer=aa=0.8[watermark];[0][watermark]overlay=W-w-10:H-h-10[out] -map [out]

-filter_complex [1]scale=iw*0.2:-1,format=rgba,colorchannelmixer=aa=0.8[watermark];[0][watermark]overlay=(W-w)/2:(H-h)/2[out] -map [out]

As you’ve noticed, we are using multiple filters here:

1. overlay - used for positioning the watermark on the video.
2. scale - used for scaling the watermark to the desired size.
3. format - used for setting the format of the watermark to rgba.
4. colorchannelmixer - used for setting the transparency of the watermark.

You can read more about the filters and other possibilities at the FFmpeg documentation .

curl -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -u "[API_KEY]:" \
  -d '{
        "projectId": "[PROJECT_ID]",
        "options": {
          "watermark": {
            "url": "https://example.com/watermark.png"
          }
        }
      }' \
  https://api.plainlyvideos.com/api/v2/renders

Download options

Video file

Instant download

By default, most Internet browsers will open a link pointing to a rendered video in a new tab and start playing it.

If you want to force a browser to download a video instead of playing it, you can enable the Instant download option. This options is available on the UI under the Output Format settings.

Change file name

By default, the file name of a rendered video will be randomly generated, for example, 1e89f1b8-076c-4e2b-a750-373ab227346a.mp4. In most cases this is fine, however this is not perfect for the use cases when the file is downloaded by the end user, or when you want to have a more descriptive file name.

When using the Instant download option you can additionally specify the file name as well using the Instant download file name option.

{{name}} - {{season:Winter}}

curl -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -u "[API_KEY]:" \
  -d '{
        "projectId": "[PROJECT_ID]",
        "options": {
          "attachment": true,
          "attachmentFileName": "my-cool-video"
        }
      }' \
  https://api.plainlyvideos.com/api/v2/renders

Project files

If you need to make further changes to your After Effects project after rendering, you can enable the project files upload option. This will collect all modified files, compress them into a ZIP file, and upload the modified project to the server for easy download.

To enable this feature using the UI, you need to check the Upload project files option under the Project settings.

The project files will be available for download on the Render details page, and the URL to the project files will be available as well as in the Render API model  under projectZipUrl field.

curl -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -u "[API_KEY]:" \
  -d '{
        "projectId": "[PROJECT_ID]",
        "options": {
          "projectFiles": {
            "uploadEnabled": true
          }
        }
      }' \
  https://api.plainlyvideos.com/api/v2/renders