I recently worked with a client who requested a video creator for their no-code product.

They wanted to find a way for their end users to be able to submit multiple video files,  images, and music via their no-code system, and mash these together into a video that can then be downloaded.

I checked out several systems, but a number of them fell short. They either took far too long to process anything for a no-code implementation to be viable, or they outright didn’t offer the level of “simple” functionality that was needed for this feature to get off the ground. For example, one of them needed you to specify every single criteria on every single action, even if it wasn’t necessary. This included “length of video clip 1” on an action to combine two clips together.

Then I came across “Creatomate”. Their system was initially a little imposing, but it quickly made sense through their tutorials and explanations of how things work. Plus, it has the upside of being a RESTful API, so cURL calls through Bubble really simplify the connection.

How Creatomate works

The process essentially boils down to using their site’s editor to build a template for a video. Here, you can select a prebuilt one, or a blank one, and then add-to/edit the contents. During this process, you can change as many properties of items as you like, as well as specify what exactly should be “dynamic”.

Once you’ve built your template, you can get the API code generated for you, including the template ID and all the key pairings. This can be straight-up copy and pasted into the API connector and you’re pretty much good to go. Just set up all of the inputs as dynamic fields and you’re set.

Here, you can then specify your video clips, images, music, text, etc. and send them off in an API call, which will instantly return a URL for the render. While this render will take 10-15 seconds to load, it’s a very quick turnaround for a preview, and nothing is saved from these previews, so your storage space won’t get eaten up. It also won’t consume Bubble’s storage space.

The renders last 30 days before deletion and come as .MP4 files by default, so any system can play and download them.

While it’s a bit of a niche tool, you could equally use it for internal matters, to create your own marketing videos with a consistent format.

While you can easily make extra templates, your API call to a template must include ALL of the dynamic fields you’ve set up. You can't “omit” any from the call or add extras into the call either - everything must match up.