lakreet-swarm

Render many videos from one EffectCraft template and a CSV/JSON file.

You design a video once in EffectCraft, mark the parts that should change (a title, an opacity, a media file, …), and lakreet-swarm renders one video per row of your data file. No window, no clicking, no editing each copy by hand.

Unofficial. lakreet-swarm is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the Storytold team or the EffectCraft project. It only calls the effectcraft-cli program that ships with EffectCraft.

Status: v0.2.0 — early. EffectCraft itself is alpha software, and so is this tool. It has been tested on Windows (primary), Linux, and macOS with EffectCraft 0.8.0.

Quick start

# Clone the repo to get example files
git clone https://github.com/Lakreet/lakreet-swarm.git
cd lakreet-swarm

# Render 5 videos from the example template and CSV
npx lakreet-swarm render --template examples/title2.ectemplate --data examples/data.csv

You will get one video per data row in the out folder.

What it does

• Validates every row before rendering — catch errors early with line numbers
• Resumes interrupted batches — --skip-existing picks up where you left off
• Reports everything — report.json and report.csv with per-row timings and errors
• Previews instantly — preview renders one PNG frame per row for visual checks
• Generates starter CSV — init creates a ready-to-fill CSV from your template

Commands

Command	Purpose
render	Render a batch of videos
check	Validate template + data without rendering
inspect	Show template controls, media, and composition info
init	Generate a starter CSV from a template
preview	Quick PNG frame per row (visual check)
doctor	Environment diagnostics

Requirements

• EffectCraft installed (includes effectcraft-cli)
• Node.js 20 or newer

Install

npm install -g lakreet-swarm
# or run locally without installing:
npx lakreet-swarm ...

Documentation sections

• Learn — Step-by-step tutorials to build your first batch, make a template, and create personalized videos
• Guides — How-to guides for specific tasks (install, data prep, validation, preview, CI, troubleshooting)
• Reference — Complete CLI reference, configuration, data formats, control types, naming, exit codes, errors
• Concepts — Explanations of how it works, templates, validation, performance, security, limitations
• Recipes — Real-world scenarios: greeting videos, product promos, certificates, scoreboards, lower thirds, social sizes
• Tools — In-browser CSV generator (no upload, no storage)

Compatibility

lakreet-swarm	EffectCraft	Node	OS
0.2.0	0.8.0	20, 22, 24	Windows, Linux, macOS

Run lakreet-swarm doctor to check your environment against the compatibility matrix.

Next steps

• Your first batch — 5 videos in 10 minutes
• Install — Get set up and verified
• Prepare a CSV — Data file format details