Files
hyperframes/packages/engine
James 77b7646b5e fix(engine): auto-normalize VFR video inputs to CFR before frame extraction
Screen recordings (macOS ScreenCaptureKit, QuickTime, phone videos) are
commonly variable-frame-rate. When such inputs hit the extractor's
`-ss <start> -i <video> -t <dur> -vf fps=N` pipeline, the fps filter
can emit fewer frames than requested — for a 4-second 30fps segment
starting mid-file, the output was ~90 frames instead of 120.

`FrameLookupTable.getFrameAtTime` returns null for out-of-range indices,
so the compositor held the last valid frame and the user perceived the
video as freezing. This matches the bug report from an X community post
where a user said "all of them freezes" on their screen recording scenes.

The engine already detects VFR via `metadata.isVFR` in ffprobe.ts but
never acted on it — the compiler only logged a warning. This change
mirrors the existing SDR→HDR normalization pattern: when a source is
detected as VFR, re-encode only the used segment with
`-fps_mode cfr -r <fps> -preset fast -crf 18` before extraction.

Scoping the re-encode to `[mediaStart, mediaStart+duration]` means a
30-second clip cut from a 60-minute screen recording pays ~1s of
transcode cost, not 18s. Benchmarked locally:

  Baseline (current):         32-39% duplicate frames, 25% frame-count
                              shortfall on mid-file segments.
  Tier 1 (flag changes only): ~same — fps filter issue is not flag-fixable.
  Tier 2 (CFR preflight):     1.7-6% duplicate frames, correct frame
                              count in every scenario tested.

The compiler warning that previously told users to manually re-encode
is downgraded to `console.info` since the engine now handles it.

— Rames Jusso
2026-04-21 07:00:02 +00:00
..
2026-04-20 12:40:27 -07:00
2026-03-21 22:43:56 -07:00

@hyperframes/engine

Seekable web-page-to-video rendering engine built on Puppeteer and FFmpeg.

Framework-agnostic: works with GSAP, Lottie, Three.js, CSS animations, or any web content that implements the window.__hf seek protocol.

Install

npm install @hyperframes/engine

Requirements: Node.js >= 22, Chrome/Chromium (auto-downloaded by Puppeteer), FFmpeg

What it does

The engine opens your HTML composition in a headless Chrome instance, seeks frame-by-frame using Chrome's HeadlessExperimental.beginFrame API, captures screenshots, and encodes them into video with FFmpeg.

Key services

Service Description
browserManager Launches and pools headless Chrome instances (chrome-headless-shell)
frameCapture Manages capture sessions — seek, screenshot, buffer lifecycle
screenshotService BeginFrame-based capture with CDP (Chrome DevTools Protocol)
chunkEncoder FFmpeg encoding with chunked concat, GPU detection, faststart
streamingEncoder Pipe frames to FFmpeg in real time (no intermediate PNGs on disk)
audioMixer Parse <audio> elements and mix audio tracks via FFmpeg
videoFrameExtractor Extract frames from <video> elements for compositing
parallelCoordinator Split frame ranges across worker processes
fileServer Serve local HTML files to the browser via Hono

Usage

import {
  acquireBrowser,
  releaseBrowser,
  createCaptureSession,
  initializeSession,
  captureFrame,
  closeCaptureSession,
} from "@hyperframes/engine";

// 1. Launch browser
const browser = await acquireBrowser({ captureMode: "beginFrame" });

// 2. Open a capture session
const session = createCaptureSession({
  browser: browser.browser,
  url: "http://localhost:3000/my-composition.html",
  width: 1920,
  height: 1080,
  fps: 30,
});
await initializeSession(session);

// 3. Capture frames
for (let i = 0; i < totalFrames; i++) {
  await captureFrame(session, i, `/tmp/frames/frame-${i}.png`);
}

// 4. Clean up
await closeCaptureSession(session);
await releaseBrowser(browser);

Most users should use @hyperframes/producer or the hyperframes CLI instead of calling the engine directly.

Documentation

Full documentation: hyperframes.heygen.com/packages/engine