javicle/docs/concepts.md

Concepts

In JVC the main concepts are assets and operations.

Assets

Assets are your media files: generally image, audio and video files.

All assets have a name and a path.

Input assets are defined using the assets array of a JVC spec.

For input assets, the path can be a file or a URL. URL-based assets will be downloaded to the scratch directory. This can be overridden using the dest property on the asset.

Operations produce one or more output assets, as specified in the creates property of an operation JSON object.

For output assets, the path will be within the scratch directory. You can override this using the dest property on the creates object associated with the operation.

Asset Properties

Assets expose properties that can be referenced in operations. The properties currently exposed are:

• duration: duration of the audio/video in seconds (audio and video assets only)
• width: width of the video in pixels (video and image assets only)
• height: width of the video in pixels (video and image assets only)

Operations

Operations are transformations to perform on the inputs.

An operation can produce one or more new assets, which can then be referenced in later operations.

Most of the operation settings can be JavaScript expressions, for example:

"start": "someAsset.duration - 10"

The above would set the start value to ten seconds before the end of someAsset.