> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://askeditor.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# The editable canvas

> Some templates hand back an mp4, some hand back an editable timeline. Which one, and why it matters before you spend.

## Delivery: `file` or `canvas`

Every template declares a **`delivery`** on the menu, and it is the most
useful thing to read before you spend anything. It tells you what the run is
guaranteed to hand back:

| `delivery` | What you get | Example |
| - | - | - |
| **`file`** | An **mp4**. The run ends in an encoder, `outputUrl` is the product. A canvas usually comes too, but the file is the promise. | `remove-background`, `tighten`, `launch-cut` |
| **`canvas`** | An **editable arrangement**, and no mp4. `canvasId` is the product: the value is *which* word, *when*, in *what layer order* — and it stays adjustable. | `text-behind` |

It is a floor, not an exclusive. `remove-background` returns both and is still
`file`, because the file is what it promises.

> [!NOTE]
>
> **Why a canvas template does not just render you an mp4 as well.** Its price is
> bounded by the EFFECT — text-behind mattes at most four moments of four seconds
> — while a render is bounded by the RECORDING. Auto-exporting a 20-minute take to
> show four words would cost far more than the effect did. So you ask for the file
> when you actually want one, after you have looked at the result.

Check `delivery` before you promise a user a video file. A `canvas` template
delivering exactly what it should still has no `finalUrl`, and that is not a
failure.

## What the canvas is

For a `canvas` template this **is** the deliverable; for a `file` template it
arrives alongside the mp4. Either way it is the same
edit, open in the AskEditor editor as real layers:

* clips with their trims (often windows onto your *original* material, so
  adjusting a cut point is a drag, at master quality),
* text, music and effect elements, live and selectable,
* the animations the template applied, as editable properties.

## Why it changes the integration

A flat file makes every revision a re-run. A canvas makes the common
revisions (nudge this cut, swap that word, try the other music) a
30-second human edit. For agent products this is the escape hatch that
keeps users happy when "almost right" happens, which in video is often.

## Semantic layers, not render dumps

Templates deliver canvases **decomposed the way a human editor would want
them**, not as a literal translation of the render. A background built from
hundreds of per-frame swaps arrives as one background element with its
source plates in the media library; a subtractive cut arrives as one clip
per kept span with the removed material still behind the trim handles. Each
template's page notes its delivery shape.

## Provenance

Canvases carry a stamp of *how* they were made: the template and version,
the parameters per layer, so the edit can be re-derived or re-run against
changed inputs later.


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