first-render

First render

The very basics of the Shotstack API, and the loop every other example in this cookbook builds on: submit an Edit, poll the render status, and get the output URL. The same flow is implemented twice, in Node.js and in Python. Start here if you have never rendered a video with Shotstack before.

Companion code for Render your first video with the Shotstack API.

Requirements

• A Shotstack account and your sandbox API key (dashboard menu under your account name, top right, under API Keys)
• Node.js 20 or later, or Python 3.8 or later with requests 2 or later

Sandbox renders are watermarked and don't consume credits, but your account needs at least one credit to use the environment.

Setup

git clone https://github.com/shotstack/shotstack-cookbook.git
cd shotstack-cookbook/examples/first-render

Copy the environment file. Add your sandbox key to .env.

cp .env.example .env

Load the file into your shell. Do this in each new terminal:

set -a
source .env
set +a

Run

Node.js:

node render.mjs

Python:

python3 -m pip install requests
python3 render.py

What happens

Both scripts read edit.json (a five-second "Hello World" rich-text video), submit it to the sandbox render endpoint, poll every five seconds until the render reaches done or failed, and print the temporary output URL. A sandbox render finishes in under a minute. The URL expires after 24 hours; see the guide for retrieving the CDN-hosted copy through the Serve API.