Personalized video is a paid service that allows you to better connect with prospects, customers, and supporters by weaving unique details about each person into a video.
This article outlines the technical parameters required to produce a video that can rendered on-demand with Vidyard's personalized video API. On-demand videos are typically used if you intend viewers to enter personalized details on a landing page, or if you want to send one-to-one personalized videos to recipients via the Vidyard app.
It's important that the guidelines are closely followed. The guidelines ensure that your video will work well our personalization engine and that Vidyard's Professional Services team can handle your project as efficiently as possible.
Below you will find requirements that must be adhered to throughout video production:
- Technical parameters to consider when shooting the video
- Guidelines for what edits and effects can be rendered through Vidyard's personalization engine
If you require guidance throughout your project, the Vidyard Professional Services Team is here to consult and answer any questions you may have.
Your responsibilities
From beginning to end, your production team is responsible for:
- Shooting the video according to the technical parameters listed below
- Using Adobe After Effects to apply and motion track placeholder personalized text layers and effects
- Submitting the final project to Vidyard for process and rendering.
Technical parameters
Shooting the video
The personalized video API places specific parameters on when in your video personalization can occur. In order for your video to work best with our personalization engine, consider the following when planning your project:
- Only light personalization is recommended in the first 15 seconds (try to avoid personalizing the entire 15 seconds)
- You can only personalize 30 seconds worth of the video
- Exceeding the 30-second limit may result in buffering and a non-personalized segment of the video being delivered to the viewer.
Editing in Adobe After Effects
Ensure that any additional effects added to your video are supported by Vidyard's personalization engine:
- Basic text layers only (no images or audio)
- Custom fonts are supported (these should be licensed and need to be provided as
.ttfor.otffiles; Postscript/Web fonts are not supported)- Excludes "Faux Bold" or inter-character spacing manipulations
- Motion Blur is not supported, but the Fast Box Blur effect is supported as a best-effort if applied to a composition that houses the Personalized Text Layer:
- Fast Box Blur must be the last effect listed on the Composition in After Effects.
- Fast Box Blur cannot be applied directly to the text layer
- Text layers and their parent layer/compositions cannot use effects, Alpha/Track Mattes or blending modes other than:
- Normal blend mode
- Basic 2D transform operations (anchor points, positions, scaling, rotation, opacity)
- Corner pin (this can be used to help mimic 3D placement/motion)
- Layers on top of personalized text can only use normal blend mode
- Adjustment layers or masks on top of the personalized text are not supported
- The main compositions must be 1920x1080 or 1280x720. Projects submitted with higher resolutions may not be approved
- Any elements that are not directly tied to personalization text layers should be flattened out at the bottom of the composition to increase compatibility with the engine, and keep video renders efficient.
- Tip: You can use unsupported effects in the non-personalized sections of the video to keep production quality up, provided the effects are rendered/flattened as a part of the MP4/MOV at the bottom of the composition
Final Product
The final videos will be encoded as H.264/AAC videos, 1280x720 at up to 30 FPS.