Render Videos at Scale on the Server Without Licensing or Codec Headaches
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The IMG.LY Server-Side Video SDK lets you render, transcode, and automate video production securely without FFmpeg dependencies or After Effects farms.
The IMG.LY Server-Side Video SDK lets you render, transcode, and automate video production securely without FFmpeg dependencies or After Effects farms.
Design templates in our full video editing UI, then render them server-side at scale: trim, merge, caption, and composite videos programmatically.
H.264 / H.265 encoding with full patent coverage. No hidden legal exposure.
Process high-volume video exports in parallel with built-in async rendering.
Trigger renders via REST or Node.js, integrate with your CMS or AI pipeline, and generate outputs on demand.
CE.SDK Renderer runs as a Dockerized, GPU-accelerated rendering engine that you can call directly from your backend. Trigger renders through simple CLI commands, integrate with any language or job runner, and scale automated output inside your existing infrastructure …without maintaining FFmpeg or worrying about codec compliance.
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Programmatic batch rendering for ad personalization and creative automation.
Move heavy compute from frontend to backend.
Convert generated image sequences into finished MP4s.
IMG.LY’s solution engineers did a deep dive on our business case and helped us implement a custom print kiosk UI.
Our customers create over a million personalized postcards each year choosing from over hundreds of templates with IMG.LY’s SDK. It’s the only solution that allows us to build our own specialized, on-brand UI that integrates seamlessly with our platform.
Our app has photo-editing at the very core of its experience and the editor has been invaluable in making that vision happen. There are no other tools on the market up to the quality of PE.SDK.
Contact our sales team to learn more about licensing options and get access to our AI plugins for CE.SDK.
Yes. The SDK supports NVIDIA GPU acceleration out of the box. You can run multiple GPU-enabled containers in parallel, scale across nodes, or integrate with any orchestrator (Kubernetes, ECS, Nomad) for high-throughput workloads.
It’s seamless. You can reuse your existing CE.SDK templates, scenes, assets, and automation logic without modification. The Renderer uses the same engine as the UI editor, ensuring pixel-perfect output and eliminating inconsistencies between client and server.
Yes. You can fully self-host the video rendering engine in your own infrastructure—on-premise, VPC, or air-gapped environments. Enterprise SLAs and support are available.
No. The Renderer eliminates the need for FFmpeg scripting, browser-based rendering, or queue-heavy After Effects farms. Encoding, compositing, transitions, and timeline logic all run natively inside the Renderer.
Yes. The AV-licensed version includes fully compliant H.264/H.265 encoding powered by Fluendo, covering all relevant patents. This significantly reduces the legal risks associated with open-source or unlicensed encoders—especially for high-volume or commercial video publishing.
The Renderer outputs MP4 (H.264 / H.265) for video and supports PNG, JPEG, and PDF for design scenes. Support for additional formats is available depending on licensing tier.
Yes. Rendering uses the same CE.SDK engine as the browser editor. You get frame-perfect accuracy for text, typography, animations, effects, layers, and templates—critical for automated creative production.
You can bind external data sources to CE.SDK templates in Node.js or your backend workflow. Each data row becomes a new scene, which is passed to the Renderer for automated batch export—ideal for ads, localized campaigns, catalogs, and personalization.
Not out of the box. The Renderer currently performs one-time, synchronous operations - scene in, export out.If you need async job handling, queueing, or distributed processing, you can layer your own orchestration around the CLI (e.g., using a job runner or message queue).
Yes, as long as your system can trigger CLI commands in a Docker environment. The Renderer runs purely as a CLI inside a Docker container - no REST API or Node.js SDK at the moment. Teams typically integrate it by calling the container with parameters from their CMS, DAM, or AI pipeline.
You’ll need an NVIDIA GPU for full hardware-accelerated rendering. The Renderer runs as a Docker container with no additional OS or codec setup required, and can run on CPU-only machines - but performance will be significantly slower without an NVIDIA GPU.
Yes. The open-source edition includes unlicensed codecs for testing, prototyping, and internal workflows. For production-grade video, H.264/H.265 patent-licensed encoding is available through the Fluendo-powered enterprise edition.
