# Render Videos at Scale on the Server Without Licensing or Codec Headaches

The IMG.LY Server-Side Video SDK lets you render, transcode, and automate video production securely without FFmpeg dependencies or After Effects farms.

*Your partner in crime*

## Key Advantages

### Create Templates in UI, Render at Scale

Design templates in our full video editing UI, then render them server-side at scale: trim, merge, caption, and composite videos programmatically.

### Legally safe codecs

H.264 / H.265 encoding with full patent coverage. No hidden legal exposure.

### GPU-accelerated performance

Process high-volume video exports in parallel with built-in async rendering.

### Built for automation

Trigger renders via REST or Node.js, integrate with your CMS or AI pipeline, and generate outputs on demand.

*Get Started in Minutes*

## Built for Developers

CE.SDK Renderer runs as a Dockerized, GPU-accelerated rendering engine that you can call directly from your backend. Trigger renders through simple CLI commands, integrate with any language or job runner, and scale automated output inside your existing infrastructure â¦without maintaining FFmpeg or worrying about codec compliance.

### Render at scale

Programmatic batch rendering for ad personalization and creative automation.

### Offload rendering

Move heavy compute from frontend to backend.

### AI + Video

Convert generated image sequences into finished MP4s.

## What Our Clients Say About Us

Integrating IMG.LYâs editor meant we didnât have to build or maintain a complex editing layer ourselves. That kept our team focused on our core AI ad engine and saved us countless development hours â while still giving our customers the ability to polish and customize creatives at scale.

Hikari Senju@CEO@Omneky

With IMG.LY we built a central creative portal that now powers over 140 dealer campaigns across multiple automotive brands. Before this, asset creation was slow and inconsistent. IMG.LY gave us the scale and flexibility we needed to grow.

Martin RÃ¶hr@Product Owner@Digitas

By embedding IMG.LYâs editor we were able to hit key RFP requirements and deliver a template-based creative experience that now serves 1,000+ customers. It helped us win more deals and exceed enterprise expectations without needing to hire dedicated design teams.

Rob Driscoll@Director of PM@Optimizely

Since integrating IMG.LYâs editor, we now deliver 30,000+ ad creatives per month dramatically shorten time-to-launch, and help our clients cut design spend by up to $10,000 per month.This capability has been essential to delivering on our promise of fast, scalable creative production.

Logan Welbaum@Founder@Plai

IMG.LYâs solution engineers did a deep dive on our business case and helped us implement a custom print kiosk UI.

AndrÃ© Albrecht@Digital Solution Manager@Brother

Our customers create over a million personalized postcards each year choosing from over hundreds of templates with IMG.LYâs SDK. Itâs the only solution that allows us to build our own specialized, on-brand UI that integrates seamlessly with our platform.

Jeanine Zaalberg@Product Manager@Swiss Post

Our app has photo-editing at the very core of its experience and the editor has been invaluable in making that vision happen. There are no other tools on the market up to the quality of PE.SDK.

Toby Green@Lead Developer@Elbi

From a developerâs perspective, the most powerful feature of the photo editor is the integration process. It was completely flawless, quick, and easy to integrate.

Stefano Fornari@CTO@Funambol/Zefiro

Our developers loved that the integration was really straightforward and that everything you need like APIs and documentation is easy to find and of excellent quality.

Thomas Witt@Head of Product@Infopark

I believe that it is one of the easiest to use and most powerful editors on the market and the integration possibilities into our solution are awesome.

Marcus Burk@Head of Marketing@dirico.io

We compared PhotoEditor SDK with other solutions and found that it would be the best fit for us since it provides all the features that are crucial for our use case.

Carem Pereira@SCRUM Manager@HP

## Get in Touch

Contact our sales team to learn more about licensing options and get access to our AI plugins for CE.SDK.

## FAQs

### Can I scale GPU rendering in Docker?

Yes. The SDK supports NVIDIA GPU acceleration out of the box. You can run multiple GPU-enabled containers in parallel, scale across nodes, or integrate with any orchestrator (Kubernetes, ECS, Nomad) for high-throughput workloads.

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### How do I migrate from CE.SDK?

Itâs seamless. You can reuse your existing CE.SDK templates, scenes, assets, and automation logic without modification. The Renderer uses the same engine as the UI editor, ensuring pixel-perfect output and eliminating inconsistencies between client and server.

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### Is there an on-prem license?

Yes. You can fully self-host the video rendering engine in your own infrastructureâon-premise, VPC, or air-gapped environments. Enterprise SLAs and support are available.

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### Do I still need FFmpeg or After Effects?

No. The Renderer eliminates the need for FFmpeg scripting, browser-based rendering, or queue-heavy After Effects farms. Encoding, compositing, transitions, and timeline logic all run natively inside the Renderer.

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### Is video export legally compliant?

Yes. The AV-licensed version includes fully compliant H.264/H.265 encoding powered by Fluendo, covering all relevant patents. This significantly reduces the legal risks associated with open-source or unlicensed encodersâespecially for high-volume or commercial video publishing.

### What file formats are supported?

The Renderer outputs MP4 (H.264 / H.265) for video and supports PNG, JPEG, and PDF for design scenes. Support for additional formats is available depending on licensing tier.

### Does the output match what users see in the editor?

Yes. Rendering uses the same CE.SDK engine as the browser editor. You get frame-perfect accuracy for text, typography, animations, effects, layers, and templatesâcritical for automated creative production.

### How do I use my own data (CSV, JSON, API) in templates?

You can bind external data sources to CE.SDK templates in Node.js or your backend workflow. Each data row becomes a new scene, which is passed to the Renderer for automated batch exportâideal for ads, localized campaigns, catalogs, and personalization.

### Does it support async rendering and queues?

Not out of the box. The Renderer currently performs one-time, synchronous operations - scene in, export out.If you need async job handling, queueing, or distributed processing, you can layer your own orchestration around the CLI (e.g., using a job runner or message queue).

### Can I integrate this into my CMS, DAM, or AI pipeline?

Yes, as long as your system can trigger CLI commands in a Docker environment. The Renderer runs purely as a CLI inside a Docker container - no REST API or Node.js SDK at the moment. Teams typically integrate it by calling the container with parameters from their CMS, DAM, or AI pipeline.

### What kind of infrastructure do I need?

Youâll need an NVIDIA GPU for full hardware-accelerated rendering. The Renderer runs as a Docker container with no additional OS or codec setup required, and can run on CPU-only machines - but performance will be significantly slower without an NVIDIA GPU.

### Is there a free version?

Yes. The open-source edition includes unlicensed codecs for testing, prototyping, and internal workflows. For production-grade video, H.264/H.265 patent-licensed encoding is available through the Fluendo-powered enterprise edition.

## Read our White Papers


[Source](https://img.ly/use-cases/photo-prints)