Chapter 26: Publishing
Preview (Chapter 18) shows you the template inside the editor. Publishing compiles it into a movie on the render backend, in the project the template lives in, so it can be rendered on demand — with different variable values each time — and played by the FX Player.
Publishing a template
- Save the template. File ▸ Publish… is disabled until the template has a file path.
- Open File ▸ Publish….
- Set the output:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | The movie’s name in the project. Defaults to the template’s name |
| Resolution | Pick a preset or type width × height. Both must be even numbers |
| Frame rate | 24, 25, 29.97, 30, or 60 fps |
- Click Publish. The dialog shows progress, then a success panel with a link to the movie in the console — or an error panel listing what went wrong.
Publishing the same name again replaces the published movie. The template file itself is untouched: publish produces a movie from the template, it does not move or convert it.
What gets published
The movie. The template is compiled into an SDL movie and saved into the project the template belongs to. Variables stay variables: the published movie records which ones it uses, and each render supplies values for them.
Smart-object artwork. Smart objects and other generated vector artwork are rendered to assets and uploaded alongside the movie, in batches, so the render service does not have to run browser code.
Click hotspots. Every layer with a Click Action (Chapter 25) becomes a time-windowed hotspot in the movie’s overlay manifest. A hotspot on a layer with a visibility condition carries that condition with it and is armed per render, against that render’s variables.
The endcard. If a scene is marked as an endcard, it is published as its own movie — the still the player shows after playback, with its own hotspots. The endcard image itself is produced on demand at render time.
The success message tells you how many hotspots and whether an endcard went out, so you can check the interactivity landed.
Poster frames
A project template also keeps a poster frame — the still the console shows for it. It is captured in the browser from the canvas, refreshed automatically once editing has been idle for a while, and refreshed again when you publish. There is nothing to configure; if the poster looks stale, publish or leave the editor idle for a moment.
The frame captured is the scene’s poster time — set it in the Scene tab if the first frame of the scene isn’t representative.
Where the movie goes
Into the project that owns the template. Nothing separate is bookkept: a project template’s published movies live in its project, and the success panel’s link takes you straight there in the console.
Publishing vs. rendering
| Publishing | Rendering | |
|---|---|---|
| When | Once per version of the design | Once per output, potentially thousands of times |
| Where | From the editor, File ▸ Publish… | From the API, the console, or the player |
| Variables | Declared | Supplied |
| Result | A movie definition in the project | An MP4 (or a still, for an endcard) |
That split is the point of the whole tool: design once, publish once, render per recipient.
Troubleshooting
File ▸ Publish… is greyed out. The template has no file path yet. Save it first.
“Dimensions must be even”. Video encoders require even width and height. Nudge the odd one by a pixel.
The publish failed with a list of errors. The error panel lists what the compiler objected to. Missing media references are the usual cause — check that every image and video layer resolves, particularly in imported scene layers, whose media lives with their source template.
The published movie is missing a scene. Check whether it is marked as an endcard. Endcard scenes are deliberately excluded from the video.
Clicks don’t work in the player. Confirm the layers have Clickable ticked, republish, and check the success message’s hotspot count. A hotspot on a conditional layer only arms when its condition holds for that render’s variables.
The console shows an old thumbnail. Poster frames refresh on publish and after an idle gap. Publish again, or wait.
← Previous: Conditions and Interactivity | Next: Importing and Exporting →