Rendering your first video
Turn the scene you just built into an actual MP4 file.
This tutorial picks up with any scene open — the circle from Your first scene works fine, or anything else you've put together. The goal here is simple: go from "looks right in the editor" to an actual video file on disk.
1. Open the Render dialog
In the top toolbar, click Render. A dialog opens with two tabs: Render and Python.
2. Choose a quality preset
Under Presets you'll see four one-click options:
| Preset | Resolution | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | 480p | fast — good for checking timing and layout |
| Standard | 1080p | normal delivery quality |
| High | 1440p | sharper, slower |
| Ultra | 4K (2160p) | slowest, for final output |
For a first render, click Draft. It renders at preview quality, so you'll see a finished video in well under a minute for a short scene, without waiting on a full-quality pass.
Underneath the presets you can also pick an output format: MP4 (standard video with audio), GIF (looping, no audio — handy for docs or slides), or Transparent (WebM with an alpha channel, for compositing over other footage). MP4 is the right default unless you specifically need one of the other two.
3. Start the render
Click Start render. A status badge appears (queued → compiling → rendering), along with a progress bar and a small animated indicator so you know it's actually working. If you want to see what's happening under the hood while it runs, click Show logs to expand the raw output.
Rendering runs the real Manim command-line renderer on the server behind this app — it needs Python and Manim installed locally (or the project's Docker image) to actually produce a video. If a render fails immediately, that's the first thing to check. For what the compiler actually generates and how it's invoked, see How compilation works.
4. Preview and download
When the job finishes, the status flips to done and the finished video (or GIF) appears inline, with playback controls. Click Download to save it — it'll be named after your project.
If something looks off, Render again re-runs the job with your current settings, and you can switch presets or format first without losing anything.
Along the way: the Python tab
Click the Python tab at any point — before, during, or after a render — to see the actual Manim scene code your project compiles to, with a Copy button in the corner. This doesn't start a render; it's just a read-only look at the code, which is handy for sanity-checking what a shape or animation turned into, or for grabbing a snippet to tweak by hand outside the app.
What's next
You've placed a shape, animated it, and rendered it. The next tutorial builds something a little more substantial — a small geometric proof with a formula and precise keyframed motion — in Keyframe a geometric proof.