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Show HN: Video editor built with WebCodecs, WebAssembly and WebGL

by bjano on 11/30/21, 4:36 PM with 11 comments

  • by bjano on 11/30/21, 4:37 PM

    Hello HN! WebCodecs landed in chromium recently opening new possibilities for browser-based video editing: instead of relying on cloud-based processing, everything can now be done locally. As I never had a good answer when app developer friends asked me how to quickly edit their screen recordings for appstore listings, I decided to build something with this: a no download, no sign-up, no BS video editor.

    pros:

    - Everything is processed locally, nothing is sent to the cloud. This means privacy, but also speed: if you want to extract a 20 seconds part of a 800 MB video file, you don't have to wait for the upload. - No limits on frame size or video length. It isn't using any cloud resources so no need to put artificial limits on that. - Precise timing. Seems like a small thing, but surprisingly difficult to get it right with html <video> tags. - Preview matches exactly the final result: the exact same code generates the preview and the exported video, not some ugly hack attempting to replicate what you see in the browser to the cloud renderer.

    cons:

    - It only works properly in Chrome and Edge, with some acceptable fallbacks in Firefox. - HEVC is not supported by any browser, so for that FFmpeg is needed but that's only fast enough on recent computers - Everything needs to be loaded into memory. Compared to the cloud-based editors this isn't much of an issue as those typically limit you to 100-200 MB files anyway, but eventually I'd like to use the Filesystem API to make it possible to edit videos of any size.

    Also there are plenty of more advanced features: unlimited number of layers, motion tracking, blending modes, using LUT files, a not-so-basic painting tool, etc.

    Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

  • by vort3 on 12/1/21, 7:40 AM

    What's wrong with Firefox, why does it have limited features?