Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Show HN: A video editing SDK that runs in the browser (rendley.com)
129 points by bgrigore 6 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 53 comments
Hello HN,

Video content is more popular than ever, but the toolkit for creating such content is a bit behind. You usually have to rely on a server for rendering whenever you want to create a video editing project in the browser. This means uploading content to a server, coding complex filters and effects, and more.

My friend and I spent a year developing an SDK that handles all these complexities and offers an easy-to-use interface for developers. The SDK works entirely in the browser, manages memory efficiently so it can run even on a 7-year-old Android device, supports GLSL effects and transitions, handles captions, and much more.

We also created a custom video editor UI interface using the SDK to showcase its speed and flexibility. You can see the video editor embedded on our landing page: https://rendley.com.

As for the tech stack, the SDK was built using TypeScript, Pixi.js, C++, FFmpeg WASM, and WebCodecs. The UI interface was created using Stencil.js and MobX.

The SDK is called Rendley SDK and it is live on npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@rendley/sdk

To get started, follow this guide: https://docs.rendley.com/installation

If you want to embed the pre-made interface, follow this guide, it’s literally a few lines of code: https://docs.rendley.com/video-editor

If you have any questions about the product or any feedback, feel free to write them below, and I’ll be more than happy to answer them.




I’ve been using the ffmpeg wasm library directly for a couple of years now and it’s working OK in production though it has a number of critical issues that don’t show up except in heavy testing with a wide variety of inputs and outputs.

Note that a lot of the ffmpeg code is not memory safe and some of the file/codec plugins contain memory errors. An out-of-bounds read or write will bring down the entire wasm subsystem (and does). You have to manually figure out which codecs are actually safe to use in the browser, vs which ones are merely exposed by the ffmpeg wasm builds.


Yes, you are absolutely correct. It’s not sufficient to only use ffmpeg.wasm and pass string arguments. There have been many use cases where we needed to use libav to implement workarounds.


Are there any patent issues with mp4 you had to worry about?


Yes, we have used a free and open-source alternative to h264 to avoid it


What is it you have used?


SaaS which exist just because you needed a server to run pdf generation, video editing, syncing data across users etc are all doomed.


How is it different than Biteable or any linear editor app based on the browser? I mean, for a non techie video editor, they would only understand if its easily accessible on the browser - What difference would it make for them if the render happens on the backfround or on the client side? trying to understand the added benefits here.


The difference is that we provide the tools needed to create video editors like Biteable. The video editor you saw on our landing page is a showcase of what can be built with our SDK, and it serves as a starting point for companies looking to embed or create their own video editing software.


understood. What kind of companies are your target ICP? With innumerable video editing companies out there, do you still feel that there would be more companies building business around the same? If not, then won't your TAM be very small?


The "get in touch" button on blog.rendley.com leads to a 404 page: https://rendley.com/try-for-free


Fixed, thanks for pointing it out


I'm wondering about the claim of open source when there are no public repositories in your github account...


Yes, there are none at the moment, however, we plan on open-sourcing filters, effects, transitions, and components needed to build UI interfaces faster.


The product looks pretty good, but it feels a bit "bait-and-switch"-y to put "Open Source" on the landing page when it really isn't.


Your website says that the client is open source which is patently false, maybe update that claimed there.

Edit: it was updated and now mentions forking modules but still no public repositories.


This is ridiculous


So why are you lying?


This is really cool - I'm currently building something similar (open source) with Revideo (https://github.com/redotvideo/revideo) - we also build on top of the webcodecs API, the only part of the export that is still done on the server is audio processing.

It seems pretty unconventional to offer an sdk where people have to enter a license key, but I understand that it's hard to monetize differently when one of your key features is that you want to enable client-side rendering (not saying that this is bad - I relate to the challenge since we are offering a cloud rendering service and at some point when webcodecs is supported in all browsers, it might make sense to run revideo purely on a client device as well).


Thanks! I checked out revideo a while ago, and you guys are doing a fantastic job!

I don’t think it’s unconventional for SDKs to require a license key. It's a common practice for many products.

To address the use case where WebCodecs is not available, we’ve implemented a rendering mechanism based on FFmpeg. Although it’s slower, it does the job (It's not enabled in the current version of the package)

Cloud rendering is a great approach for certain scenarios, and we also plan to support that option in the future.


Thanks a lot, really appreciate it! Re pricing: this might be my own ignorance then.

I will definitely follow you guys, I'm curious how rendley will develop :) Good luck!


how does revideo compare/differ to remotion?


Hey! I'm pasting a slightly modified comment from our previous Show HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40646741), where I explained this in detail:

Revideo is different to Remotion.dev in a couple of ways: First, we use generator functions to describe the flow of animations - every yield within the generator function corresponds to a frame in the video. As a result, our API is very imperative (animations described at the start of the function appear in the start of the video, animations described at the end appear at the end). Remotion's React-based approach is rather declarative - it gives you a frame number and lets you describe what your video should look like as a function of the frame number. Personally, we find our "procedural" API a bit more intuitive and easier to write than the declarative approach, but we might obviously be biased here.

Secondly, we render to the HTML canvas instead of the DOM. Both have advantages and disadvantages: Rendering to the DOM lets you define animations using CSS, which most programmers are already familiar with. On the other hand, an advantage of using the HTML canvas is that it should allow you to render entirely in the browser rather than using server-side rendering, as you can simply capture the current canvas using canvas.toBlob(). We have not yet implemented this for Revideo, but people in our Discord server have made good progress towards it. Also, capturing the frame for videos is a bit faster than screenshotting it (as Remotion does), so our rendering speeds are faster than Remotion's.

Thirdly, we're MIT licensed while Remotion is not FOSS (if your company has more than three employees, you need to purchase a company license to use Remotion). This was one of our original motivations to build our own video editing framework while we were building video products.


Is your license compatible with FFmpeg's LGPL? The license on the NPM package looks weird so I'm curious whether it's compatible.


Forced to sign up with GitHub or Google? No, thanks.


The site claims "versatile codec support" but I couldn't get it work with anything except the most vanilla h264 files.

(though as I am working on a similar product I am aware that handling all the codecs is quite a bit more painful than it first seems)


Here is the list of all the formats we support: https://docs.rendley.com/video-clip

Which codec have you had problems with?


.avi file just shows a spinner in place of the preview, never finishes loading

.mkv files are not enabled in the file picker, if I select one anyway it loads, but the export hangs

hevc .mp4 loads, but the exported video is all black


We have identified the issues related to AVI and HEVC and will fix them as soon as possible. Regarding the MKV file, the rendering process hangs a little bit until the demuxing is complete. However, it should continue smoothly once demuxing is finished.

Would be amazing if you could share the mp4 files you're having problems with. Thanks!


What is the pricing? I scrolled to the pricing section, but it doesn’t actually say the price for any of the plans. I’m using an iPhone 15 Pro Max. I’m not going to fork over my email address to see a price.


The pricing isn’t displayed on the website because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all model. However, you can still try it for free, and the website allows you to create a free license.


This is really something you only do if you have a sales team. If you’re doing sales-led growth then you’re probably not going to benefit from Show HN and Product Hunt, unfortunately (with those being product-led growth). If you’ve not decided which of those two growth models you’re using I’d recommend choosing - you can only do one well. You need a sales team or a price.


What makes you guys so special compared to every website I’ve ever been to of every startup of any size that you can just have no pricing and think people will use your product.

I was excited to try this but I’m not getting started with something even for 5 minutes without knowing what I’m getting myself in for.


this 100%, i was going to add this to a product and pay for it, but having to go through a conversation, justify my use is low, negotiate the price etc. makes me triple-think using you guys. the product is awesome but you are killing growth with this pricing


Also - if you aren’t going to show pricing. Maybe don’t have a page called ‘pricing’ ?


> The pricing isn’t displayed on the website because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all model

So how about listing the different sizes for people to see?


[flagged]


It's a strategy for avoiding signups from users that are unlikely to convert to sales. In the early stages of finding product-market-fit flexibility in pricing and limiting users to people that are strongly aligned with what you're doing can be pretty effective at figuring out how the product should look and be priced once you're ready to scale out to any users.


Can't stress it enough: THIS IS NOT OPEN SOURCE. They are lying on their page.


What are you using Pixi.js for in this case? Good luck with the launch!


Thanks! We are using Pixi.js to create the composition on the WebGL canvas


Is this using ffmpeg wasm?


Yes, it's ffmpeg.wasm with some modifications. We also implemented some of the functionality using libav directly.


How are you dealing with mp4 encode patents. Is there any issue with those? I remember that being a problem at some point. Someone correct me if this is no longer an issue.


did you use WORKER_FS to get around the 4GB limit? Years ago I was playing with this and encountered issues with large files.


https://chillin.online, another online video editor, editing video in browser is in trend now.


Can't log in; user already exists.


I have responded to your support ticket. Please let us know if you would like any further actions to be taken.


None of this is open source contrary to your claims. Blatant false advertising


Pricing page… with no bloody pricing?

Now I’ve also logged in to see if I get pricing. Still no pricing. Seriously guys. This is just silly.


Update:

Thank you for your interest in Rendley SDK! We don't have a one-size-fits-all price that applies to all companies, but if we were to average the costs, our pricing would be around $5,000 per year for the SDK, Video Editor interface, and a growing package of filters, effects, and transitions.


same, extremely disappointed. they are losing out on so much traffic with that pricing. I hope we get more competition in this space as AI makes producing code easier. I don't want to implement an editor from scratch but I also don't wanna fork over $5k/yr minimum


please take this as feedback and add pricing, this is silly


Same. In my case - I will not log in ("By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.") unless I can check the price.


please make pricing transparent, you are killing growth by having users email you to use your product




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: