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Quickstart: build in the editor

The editor is the hands-on path: a blank canvas, scenes on the left, the properties sidebar on the right. Nothing about it is video-specific until you press play — if you can lay out a slide, you can build a template. The one idea to learn is that a layer becomes dynamic the moment you type a placeholder into it.

1:31 — a blank template, three scenes of placeholders, publish, and two rendered variants.

You need an ImpossibleFX account and a project — see Before you start.

1. Create a blank template

Open your project in the Console and click Templates in the project sidebar, then New template. Give it a name — quote-demo — and a description if you want one.

The editor opens on an empty first scene. Its three regions are worth naming once:

RegionWhat lives there
LeftThe scenes of this template, in playback order
MiddleThe canvas — the frame as the viewer will see it
RightThe properties sidebar for whatever is selected

File → Template Setup… sets the canvas size and the default scene duration. The default 1920×1080 is right for this tutorial.

2. Add the greeting

Click Text in the toolbar (or Layer → Text). A text layer appears on the canvas with its properties on the right. In the Content box, type:

Hello {name}

That is the whole trick. The braces mark name as a variable: at render time it is replaced with whatever value you pass, and everything outside the braces stays as designed. Style the layer as you would any other text — font, weight, size, colour in the properties sidebar on the right.

Raise the font size and the text will outgrow its box — descenders in letters like g and y clip against the edge. The fix is the overflow control in the toolbar: set it to Resize and the text shrinks to fit the box it has.

* Tip

Shrink-to-fit is what stops personalization from breaking a layout. Your sample value is short; someone’s real name may be Alexandra-Konstantina. With a fixed box and Resize, the long name comes back smaller instead of overflowing the frame.

3. Add the quotation scene

Add a second scene, and in it three more text layers:

{policyType}
{coverage}
{premium} / month

Note the last one: a placeholder and fixed text can share a layer. {premium} carries the number, / month is part of the design.

4. Add the call to action

A third scene, and in it a Shape → Rectangle. Give it a Border Radius and it becomes a button. Tick Clickable in the properties sidebar and a URL field appears — a placeholder works here too, so https://example.com/quote?ref={quoteRef} carries each viewer’s own reference into the click.

Then a text layer on top of the shape: View my quote.

5. Check and preview your variables

Click the { } button in the toolbar. The variables popup lists every placeholder in the template and which scene each one is used in. Click a row to give it a sample value — name = Alex.

Then tick Show values. The canvas swaps {name} for Alex while the layer itself still reads Hello {name} — that is the whole relationship between a template and a render, on one screen.

Use Preview to play it through before you publish.

6. Publish it as a dynamic movie

File → Publish…. Confirm the resolution and frame rate, and set the name of the published movie — quote-demo. This name is what the API and the Console will call it, so keep it short and stable.

i Note

Publishing takes a snapshot. Later edits in the editor don’t change the live movie until you publish again — so you can keep working on the template while the published one keeps rendering.

7. Render two variants

In the Console, open your project and click Dynamic Movies in the sidebar.

  1. Select quote-demo in the list.

  2. Open the Play tab. The parameter form lists exactly the placeholders you typed into your layers — one field per variable, nothing to configure.

  3. Fill in the first variant and press play:

    ParameterValue
    nameAlex
    policyTypeComprehensive Home & Contents
    coverage€500,000 buildings · €75,000 contents
    premium€42.00

  4. Now change two values and play again:

    ParameterValue
    nameSam
    policyTypeBasic Contents
    coverage€150,000 contents
    premium€19.50

Two videos, one template. Nothing you built was re-edited between them — only the parameters changed.

* Tip

The Render API tab on the same screen turns whatever you typed into the parameter form into a ready-made render request. It is the quickest way to get the exact JSON body for your own code.

Next

Rendering from the Console is a preview. To do it from an application, see Render from your app, or jump to the Render API reference.

Prefer to have the first draft written for you? The AI agent quickstart builds the same template from a prompt — and the result opens in this same editor.

For everything this quickstart skipped — the timeline, animations, themes, track mattes, voiceover and the rest — see the full Editor Manual.