This is very cool! I've been looking for some time for a project that has:
- a stellar editing UI for "prototyping" a well-edited video
- a well-documented timeline-level API for the file format that can replace, timeshift, and add clips and tracks, and
- be able to run on cloud hardware as a render service
Imagine creating a promotional video, then automatically swapping in each client's logo and re-rendering it for each one! The possibilities here are endless.
DaVinci Resolve can't be beat for #1 and seems to support #3 well, but its API seems designed more for plugins than for automated authoring. For instance, the documentation at https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=9927... seems to give just read-only access to a lot of things at the TimelineClip level. And https://github.com/pedrolabonia/pydavinci has exactly one contributor.
By contrast, Shotcut seems to be built on, and by, https://mltframework.org/ with a close correspondence between the runtime API surface and the file system representation of a file, and it's fully open-source. Very possibly the sweet spot we've been looking for!
- a stellar editing UI for "prototyping" a well-edited video
- a well-documented timeline-level API for the file format that can replace, timeshift, and add clips and tracks, and
- be able to run on cloud hardware as a render service
Imagine creating a promotional video, then automatically swapping in each client's logo and re-rendering it for each one! The possibilities here are endless.
DaVinci Resolve can't be beat for #1 and seems to support #3 well, but its API seems designed more for plugins than for automated authoring. For instance, the documentation at https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=9927... seems to give just read-only access to a lot of things at the TimelineClip level. And https://github.com/pedrolabonia/pydavinci has exactly one contributor.
By contrast, Shotcut seems to be built on, and by, https://mltframework.org/ with a close correspondence between the runtime API surface and the file system representation of a file, and it's fully open-source. Very possibly the sweet spot we've been looking for!