Skip to content

Planning a video project

A video project is a plan made of scenes, captions and audio. Nothing listed there is a video file.

Updated

A video project holds the plan for one composition: its scenes, its captions and its audio tracks, arranged on three rails. Cutting a version freezes that plan into something a compositor could be handed.

Nothing on the video projects page is a video file, and nothing there has been rendered or charged. Rendering a cut version is a separate step, and no deployment can currently perform it.

BEFORE YOU START

  • The "create" or "edit" permission to start a project; the "view" permission to open one. The list page shows the refusal rather than hiding the button, because it will not offer a form the server would reject.
  • Media in your library to build scenes from.
  • Nothing else, and no credits. Planning a composition costs nothing.

STEPS

  1. Open /app/video-projects and read the list. The columns tell you each project's status, shape, composed length and whether a version has been cut.
  2. Choose "Start a video project". The composition editor opens with three empty rails and no version cut.
  3. Build the scenes rail, then the captions rail, then the audio rail. Save each rail; a project with an unsaved rail cannot be submitted for render.
  4. Cut a composition version. This freezes the document, records its hash, names the delivery profile and freezes any voices used into that cut.
  5. Read the render panel. It reports whether a compositor is available and, if not, what kind of blocker it is.

WHAT YOU SHOULD SEE

The project in the list with a version number, reading "Version 1 is current". A project with no cut version reads "No version cut - cannot be rendered", which is a statement about the plan and not about a failure.

WHAT THIS WILL NOT DO

  • It does not render. Rendering is a render job with the composition modality, and no deployment has an active compositor.
  • It does not measure anything. Nothing in the product probes an output file, so a length shown is either what the provider reported or what was requested, and it stays unknown rather than defaulting to zero.
  • A composition version cannot be edited or deleted. Versions are cut, not amended; cut a new one instead.
  • A version is cut for exactly one delivery profile and is not re-cut for another automatically.
  • Some fields the editor round-trips are not editable anywhere: rights on a scene are preserved but never changed here, and the storyboard promotion is not built.

IF IT DOES NOT WORK

  • "Your role can't start a video project in this organisation." means you need "create" or "edit". The page states the same pair the API requires so it never offers a form that would be refused.
  • "This organisation's video projects could not be listed" is different from having none, and the page keeps the two apart.
  • "This version was cut for a delivery profile this build no longer knows about." means the profile has been removed since the cut. Cut a new version.
  • Save a rail before submitting; the editor refuses submission while any rail is unsaved.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Why does the list say a project has no composed length?

Because it has no scenes yet, so there is nothing to measure.

Is a cut version a video?

No. It is a frozen plan with a hash, a delivery profile and a fixed set of voices. It is what a compositor would be given.

  • Rendering a composition

    What submitting a cut version does, why every deployment currently answers "no provider active", and what that costs.

  • Choosing a delivery profile

    A delivery profile is the platform a cut is made for, and it decides the shape, length and limits the render is checked against.

  • Following a render

    The renders page, what each render state means, and the rule that a render is charged only when a provider produced something.

  • Managing your media library

    Registering assets with their rights and consent, organising them into folders, and what "ready" means when a post publishes.