API documentation
Core concepts
Six ideas cover almost every tool call: the share, its sources, the A-roll and B-roll split, transcripts, edits, and multicam groups.
Sources
A source is one piece of media in the share. It has an id, a name and a roll type. Listing the sources is the first call worth making against an unfamiliar project, because everything else refers back to it.
Tools accept a source in three ways:
- By id. Always exact. Use it whenever names could collide.
- By name. The file extension is optional, and matching ignores case, underscores and dashes.
- By position. Its number in the listing, counting from one.
An unknown reference fails, and the failure lists the valid sources. A reference that matches several sources also fails, and names the candidates. Nothing is guessed at.
A-roll and B-roll
Every source is classified as one of two kinds, and the classification decides how the editor treats it.
- A-roll
- The footage that carries the story: interviews, pieces to camera, anything whose words drive the cut. It is transcribed, and speakers are analysed.
- B-roll
- Cutaway footage laid over A-roll: scenery, hands, the thing being discussed. It is analysed for what it shows rather than for what is said.
Eddie classifies sources on import. The classification can be corrected, and a correction is permanent: automatic classification never flips it back.
Edits already built are snapshots. Clips cut from a source keep playing in those edits after the source is reclassified.
Transcripts
A transcript belongs to a source, and it is a list of timed segments rather than a wall of text. A segment is the unit the editor works in: it is what a search returns, what a cut is assembled from, and what a trim adjusts.
Search across a project’s transcripts to find moments, then work with the segments that come back. Reading a whole transcript is for when you need the full record; searching is for when you need a moment.
Edits
An edit is a cut assembled from the share’s sources. It has a name, and a share can hold several — a long assembly and a short teaser from the same footage, for example. Tools that change an edit take its name.
An edit is a sequence of segments. Refinements name a segment by its position in that sequence, counting from zero.
Edits are versioned. A change can be listed and rolled back, so an experiment does not have to be a one-way door.
Refinements are scoped to the edit they name. A crop, a caption or a trim on one edit leaves the other edits and the sources untouched.
Multicam groups
When several cameras record one take, the sources are grouped as angles of that take. The group is structural: the angles are synced to each other, and the editor can cut between them.
An angle inside a standing group cannot be reclassified as A-roll or B-roll, because its role in the group is what it is. If the grouping itself is wrong — files that are not simultaneous angles of one take — break the group first, then reclassify.
The tools that read, build and change all of this are listed in the tool reference.