React Video Editor SDK

This CE.SDK configuration is highly customizable and extendible, offering a complete suite of video editing features such as splitting, cropping, and composing clips on a timeline.

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Key Capabilities of the React Video Editor SDK

What is the Video Editor Solution?

The Video Editor is a prebuilt solution powered by the CreativeEditor SDK (CE.SDK) that enables fast integration of high-performance video editing into web, mobile, and desktop applications. It’s designed to help your users create professional-grade videos—from short social clips to long-form stories—directly within your app.

Skip building a video editor from scratch. This fully client-side solution provides a solid foundation with an extensible UI and a robust engine API to power video editing in any use case.

Browser Support

Video editing mode relies on modern web codecs, which are currently only available in the latest versions of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or other Chromium-based browsers.

Prerequisites

Get the latest stable version of Node.js & NPM

Supported File Types

IMG.LY’s Creative Editor SDK enables you to load, edit, and save MP4 files directly in the browser without server dependencies.

Importing Media

Category	Supported Formats
Images	.png, .jpeg, .jpg, .gif, .webp, .svg, .bmp
Video	.mp4 (H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC), .mov (H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC)
Audio	.mp3, .m4a, .mp4 (AAC or MP3), .mov (AAC or MP3)

Exporting Media

Category	Supported Formats
Images	.png (with transparency), .jpeg, .webp, .tga
Video	.mp4 (H.264 or H.265 on supported platforms with limited transparency support)
Print	.pdf (supports underlayer printing and spot colors)
Scene	.scene (description of the scene without any assets)
Archive	.zip (fully self-contained archive that bundles the .scene file with all assets)

Importing Templates

Format	Description
.idml	InDesign
.psd	Photoshop
.scene	CE.SDK Native

For detailed information, see the full file format support list.

Getting Started

If you’re ready to start integrating CE.SDK into your Vue.js application, check out the CE.SDK Getting Started guide.

In order to configure the editor for a video editing use case consult our video editor UI showcase and its reference implementation.

Understanding CE.SDK Architecture & API

The following sections provide an overview of the key components of the CE.SDK video editor UI and its API architecture.

If you’re ready to start integrating CE.SDK into your React application, check out our Getting Started guide or dive into the Essential Guides.

CreativeEditor Video UI

The CE.SDK video UI is built for intuitive video creation and editing. Here are the main components and customizable elements within the UI:

• Canvas: The core interaction area for video content.
• Dock: Entry point for interactions not directly related to the selected video block, often used for accessing asset libraries.
• Canvas Menu: Access block-specific settings like duplication or deletion.
• Inspector Bar: Manage block-specific functionalities, such as adjusting properties of the selected block.
• Navigation Bar: Handles global scene actions like undo/redo and zoom.
• Canvas Bar: Provides tools for managing the overall canvas, such as adding pages or controlling zoom.
• Timeline: Core video editing control, where clips and audio are arranged in time.

CreativeEngine

CreativeEngine is the heart of CE.SDK, managing the rendering and manipulation of video scenes. It can be used in headless mode or integrated with the CreativeEditor UI. Below are key features and APIs provided by the CreativeEngine:

• Scene Management: Create, load, save, and modify video scenes programmatically.
• Block Manipulation: Create and manage video elements, such as shapes, text, and images.
• Asset Management: Load assets like videos and images from URLs or local sources.
• Variable Management: Define and manipulate variables within scenes for dynamic content.
• Event Handling: Subscribe to events like block creation or updates for dynamic interaction.

API Overview

The APIs of CE.SDK are grouped into several categories, reflecting different aspects of scene management and manipulation.

Scene API:- Creating and Loading Scenes: Block API:- Creating Blocks: - Setting Properties: - Querying Properties: Variable API: Variables allow dynamic content within scenes to programmatically create variations of a design. - Managing Variables: Asset API:- Managing Assets: Event API:- Subscribing to Events:

Customizing the React Video Editor

CE.SDK provides extensive customization options to adapt the UI to various use cases. These options range from simple configuration changes to more advanced customizations involving callbacks and custom elements.

Basic Customizations

• Configuration Object: When initializing the CreativeEditor, you can pass a configuration object that defines basic settings such as the base URL for assets, the language, theme, and license key.

• Localization: Customize the language and labels used in the editor to support different locales.

• Custom Asset Sources: Serve custom video or image assets from a remote URL.

UI Customization Options

• Theme: Choose between predefined themes such as ‘dark’ or ‘light’.

• UI Components: Enable or disable specific UI components based on your requirements.

Advanced Customizations

Learn more about extending editor functionality and customizing its UI to your use case by consulting our in-depth customization guide. Here is an overview of the APIs and components available to you.

Order APIs

Customization of the web editor’s components and their order within these locations is managed through specific Order APIs, allowing the addition, removal, or reordering of elements. Each location has its own Order API, e.g., setDockOrder, setCanvasMenuOrder, setInspectorBarOrder, setNavigationBarOrder, and setCanvasBarOrder.

Layout Components

CE.SDK provides special components for layout control, such as ly.img.separator for separating groups of components and ly.img.spacer for adding space between components.

Registration of New Components

Custom components can be registered and integrated into the web editor using builder components like buttons, dropdowns, and inputs. These components can replace default ones or introduce new functionalities, deeply integrating custom logic into the editor.

Feature API

The Feature API enables conditional display and functionality of components based on the current context, allowing for dynamic customization. For example, you can hide certain buttons for specific block types.

Plugins

You can customize the CE.SDK web editor during its initialization using the APIs outlined above. For many use cases, this will be adequate. However, there are times when you might want to encapsulate functionality for reuse. This is where plugins become useful.

Follow our guide on building your own plugins to learn more or check out one of the plugins we built using this api:

Background Removal: Adds a button to the canvas menu to remove image backgrounds. Vectorizer: Adds a button to the canvas menu to quickly vectorize a graphic.

Framework Support

CreativeEditor SDK’s video editing library is compatible with any Javascript including, React, Angular, Vue.js, Svelte, Blazor, Next.js, Typescript. It is also compatible with desktop and server-side technologies such as electron, PHP, Laravel and Rails.

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