Node-Express Video Transcoder API

A simple node-express API that lets you transcode videos and generate corresponding.hls and .ts files.

Medium Article

Future updates will allow users to

• upload videos to the server
• download the transcoded result
• upload the transcoded files to AWS S3
• access the video through AWS Cloudfront CDN

👨🏻‍💻 Getting Stated

• run npm i to install all project dependencies.
• run npm run dev to start the dev server.
• v1.0.0: add video(s) in './src/videos/raw folder. For ease, there is already a video and its transcoded files added in ./src/videos folder. All you need to do is open the ./index.html file.

📦 Begin Transcoding

Version 2.0.0

• Once you have the project running on localhost, upload a new video file using the POST /transcode/new endpoint.
• Once the video gets uploaded, transcoding starts immediately and just like in v1.0.0, generated output is stored in the ./src/videos/transcoded folder.
• Once transcoding is completed, the uploaded file is removed from the local fs.

Version 1.0.0

• copy the complete video name, including the file extension, of the file that you want to transcode, say my-video.mp4.
• for v1.0.0, you can either use your browser or terminal to send a GET request to htp://localhost:4000/transcode/new/my-video.mp4

📺 Consuming the .hls file and video chunks

• in the ./index.html file, change the src value for the <video></video> element to point to the .hls file for your video.
• open the .html file and the network tab (in the dev tools), side by side.
• you will be able to see multiple requests being sent for .ts files, which is nothing but the browser requesting for more chunks as the video keeps playing.
• stop playback and no more chunks will be fetched.
• skip to a new video position and a new chunk will be fetched.
• jump back to a point in video which has already played and you'll see that the chunk was loaded immediately from disk cache.

❗️Important

Please read CHANGELOG.md and check the version number in package.json to make sure you're following the right steps to get stuff done.

Transcoder runs on port 4000 by default. If you wish to change this, you can either add a .env file at the root level, or directly change the port number in './src/index.ts

time taken for transcoding to complete will depend upon the file size of the video being used.

Video in the ./src/videos/raw folder has been downloaded from YouTube for the purpose of this project and not for re-distribution or anything.