During the pandemic, IKEA sought a way to let its members send personalized video messages to loved ones. Grupo W, a Mexican agency with two decades of experience, faced the challenge of generating nearly 90,000 unique videos in a tight window. Their legacy approach—manually configuring servers and scripting with FFmpeg—proved too slow and expensive. By adopting Shotstack’s cloud‑based media generation API, they achieved rapid, reliable rendering at scale, freeing resources for creative work. This case study shows how a well‑designed workflow and a developer‑friendly API can transform a complex production pipeline into a lean, cost‑effective operation.
Context and practical value
Grupo W used Shotstack to generate 86,747 personalized videos for an IKEA campaign, reducing infrastructure costs and rendering time while handling high‑volume bursts.
The article distills the case study into actionable insights for developers: how to structure a JSON timeline, integrate the API, and scale rendering without managing servers. It also highlights practical cost‑saving steps and common pitfalls when moving from a custom FFmpeg pipeline to a cloud service.
Key takeaways
- Use a cloud media API to offload heavy rendering and avoid server maintenance.
- Design the workflow around a JSON timeline to keep development fast and error‑free.
- Scale is built in: Shotstack handled tens of thousands of renders per minute without custom infrastructure.
The Problem: Heavy‑Lift Video Rendering
Grupo W’s original pipeline required dedicated servers, FFmpeg, MLT, and Node.js scripts. Scaling to thousands of videos meant provisioning compute clusters, managing storage, and troubleshooting encoding bugs—tasks that consumed time and money.
Solution: Shotstack’s Serverless API
Shotstack’s REST API accepts a JSON timeline that describes tracks, clips, and output settings. The service runs the rendering in a managed environment, automatically scaling to meet demand. The agency could focus on creative assets rather than infrastructure.
Performance & Scale
The IKEA campaign produced 86,747 videos, 33,253 minutes of footage, and peaked at 3,609 renders per hour. Shotstack handled these bursts without custom scaling logic, demonstrating its reliability under heavy load.
Developer Experience
With SDKs in PHP and JavaScript and comprehensive documentation, the team integrated the API in a few lines of code. The JSON specification made it easy to programmatically assemble personalized storyboards.
Cost & Time Savings
By eliminating server setup and maintenance, Grupo W saved thousands of dollars and reduced the overall project timeline from weeks to days.
Practical next steps
- 1. Sign up for a Shotstack account and obtain an API key.
- 2. Define a JSON timeline that includes dynamic elements (text, images, clips).
- 3. Use the SDK or REST endpoint to submit render jobs and poll for completion.
- 4. Store the resulting URLs in a CDN or media library for distribution.
Limits and verification
- The case study focuses on a single campaign; results may vary with different content types or geographic constraints.
FAQ
What video formats does Shotstack support?
Shotstack can render MP4, WebM, and other common formats; the output format is specified in the JSON payload.
Can I use Shotstack for live streaming?
Shotstack is designed for on‑demand rendering; live streaming requires a different architecture.