Creatomate
Fundamentals -> Template Editor

Auto arrangement

When automating video production, you'll often need to handle elements whose length you can't predict beforehand. This includes user-uploaded videos or AI-generated speech that varies in duration yet determines how long your final video will be. You may also create designs that showcase different numbers of images or scenes with each generated video.

Auto arrangement addresses this need by enabling templates to intelligently adjust their length based on whatever materials are provided during rendering.

Responsive by design

Every element added to your template has a responsive duration by default. When you don't explicitly set a fixed time or duration, elements are automatically positioned on the timeline in the most logical way:

  • Media elements like videos or audio derive their duration from their source, whether that's an input MP4 file or the playtime of voice-over text.
  • Compositions (groups of elements sharing the same timeline) automatically expand to precisely contain all their nested elements.
  • Static elements like text or images don't have an inherent duration, so they occupy whatever time is available to them on the timeline.

Understanding timeline responsiveness

Let's illustrate timeline responsiveness with an example. Imagine you want to overlay a logo on a video. How this would look is illustrated below.

In this composition, you wouldn't want to specify a fixed duration because it entirely depends on the video file provided to Background-Video. Therefore, you'll let Creatomate determine the time arrangement automatically. To achieve this, leave all durations at their defaults: (Media) for Background-Video, and (Auto) for both the Logo and the template composition itself.

All icons are explained in Timeline indicators.

By default, media elements have their duration set to "Media" to match their source length. However, in certain cases, you might want to override this by changing their duration to "Auto" instead, for example, when you need the background video to adapt to the composition's length rather than using its own duration. You can make this change by clicking the duration icon at the right edge of the element's bar. For more details on this approach, see Sync Up Elements.

Automating timing

The same goes for when an element starts. If you don't set its start time, it starts where the element before it on the same track ends. The timeline shows this with a chain link on the seam between the two bars.

Say the template plays two videos one after the other, both on "Media" and with no start time set. The second video then starts where the first one ends, and the template, still on "Auto", ends where the second one does. A longer first video pushes the second one later, which makes the template longer, and the logo again fills it to the end.

We will explore specific examples of timeline responsiveness in the following section:

Sync Up Elements
→

Further reading on how to synchronize multiple elements on the timeline.

Divide a Scene Evenly
→

Give every element on a track an equal share of the scene, for example images over the length of a voice-over.

Related resources