James Russo b651a9d218 perf(producer): skip wasted Chrome media work + injector page.evaluates during render (#1651)
## What

Two small render-side improvements for video-heavy compositions:

1. **`packages/core/src/runtime/media.ts`** — gate the per-tick `el.currentTime = relTime` set + the `el.load()` drift-recovery retry on the *absence* of a `<img id="__render_frame_<id>__">` sibling (i.e., we're in render mode + this video's visual is bypassed by frame injection + its audio is mixed by ffmpeg from source files).

2. **`packages/engine/src/services/videoFrameInjector.ts`** — probe `window.__hfReseekGpu` and `window.__hf.colorGrading.redraw` once at the first injector call; cache the booleans; skip the per-frame `page.evaluate` round-trips when neither capability is registered.

## Why

#### media.ts

During render the runtime calls `el.currentTime = relTime` on every active video per sync tick. For frame-injected videos that's pure waste:
- The visual comes from the `<img id="__render_frame_<id>__">` sibling injected by the producer's `videoFrameInjector` — the `<video>` element is `visibility: hidden`.
- Audio is mixed by ffmpeg from the source files in `runAudioStage` (separate stage) — it never goes through the in-browser audio pipeline during render.

So every per-tick seek just kicks Chrome's media pipeline (buffering checks, range fetches, decoder state changes) for no visible or audible benefit. On a 30 × 32 MB synth comp, that's ~2,400 wasted seeks per render — and the cost wasn't on the JS critical path, so it didn't show up in `avgBeforeCapture` directly. It bled into the BeginFrame compositor's per-frame screenshot time.

Preview is unaffected: the injection sibling only exists during render. In preview `hasInjectionSibling` is always false → existing seek path runs unchanged.

#### videoFrameInjector.ts

The injector hook ran `__hfReseekGpu` and `redrawRuntimeColorGrading` via `page.evaluate` on every render frame. For comps that don't register either capability (the common case — anything without WebGL/WebGPU video sub-comps or a color-grading layer), each was a no-op page-side function preceded by a ~CDP-round-trip-worth of overhead. Probing once and caching `false` eliminates that for the rest of the render.

## How was this validated

Stress shape: `synth-30-heavy` — 30 × 32 MB MP4 / 3 s each, sequenced end-to-end over a 90 s timeline (`data-composition-id` root + per-video `<video id="vid-NN" data-start data-duration data-track-index>`). Host: 8-core / 30 GB Linux.

N=3 baseline against stock `origin/main` (post-#1630), N=3 with-fix on the same machine, same corpus, fresh worker pool each run. Phase timings via `[Render:trace]` JSON; per-frame sub-breakdown via a one-line `[CapturePerf]` stderr emit (kept locally, not in this PR — `dedupPerfs` already carries the data, this branch surfaces it).

|  | Baseline N=3 | With-fix N=3 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| wall mean | 119.5 s ± 1.4 s | **117.3 s ± 0.9 s** | **-2.2 s (-1.8%)** |
| avg screenshot / frame | 50.0 ms | **49.0 ms** | -2.0% |
| avg beforeCapture / frame | 13.0 ms | **12.1 ms** | -7.0% |
| avg total / frame | 66.0 ms | 63.9 ms | -3.2% |
| output md5 | `5a22be64...` | identical ×3 | ✓ |

The 1 ms screenshot drop is the load-bearing signal: it confirms the kicked Chrome media-pipeline work *was* bleeding into BeginFrame compositor time, even though it wasn't on the JS critical path. Per-frame budget improved 2.1 ms × 2700 / 3 workers ≈ 1.9 s of `capture_disk` savings, which matches the observed wall delta.

This stacks cleanly with #1630 (which removed the injector's fileServer contention). #1630 moved the injector's PNG fetches off the fileServer's hot path; this PR keeps Chrome's media pipeline quiet during render so the BeginFrame compositor runs unhindered.

## Test plan

- [x] Local-CLI render on `synth-30-heavy` × N=3 baseline + N=3 with-fix; wall, per-frame, md5 captured (above).
- [x] Lint / format / typecheck via lefthook pre-commit (`oxlint`, `oxfmt`, `fallow audit`, `tsc --noEmit` across `@hyperframes/core` + `@hyperframes/engine` + `@hyperframes/producer`).
- [ ] *Real-world video-heavy comp validation* — would love a Magi / Miga eye on a HF-heygen-stripe-shape or a Rahino-shape comp to confirm there's no audible artifact on unmuted videos. The change shouldn't affect them — in render mode the audio path is ffmpeg, not the in-browser pipeline — but a sanity-check render is cheap.

## Scope notes

- *Not addressed in this PR*: the user-facing request for an upfront-extract concurrency cap (`Promise.all` in `extractAllVideoFrames` is currently unbounded across all videos). Filing as a follow-up PR — different layer of the pipeline, different user surface (CLI flag), worth keeping separate for review.
- *Edge case*: in the calibration test-frame phase, the injection sibling may not yet exist when drift recovery first checks a video at the very start of its active window. The gate correctly defaults to "no sibling → run the seek" in that case, which is the existing behavior.

_Authored by Jerrai (Rames team)._
2026-06-22 17:12:28 -07:00
2026-06-22 22:44:19 +00:00
2026-06-22 22:44:19 +00:00
2026-06-22 22:44:19 +00:00
2026-06-22 22:44:19 +00:00
2026-03-21 22:43:56 -07:00

HyperFrames

npm version npm downloads License Node.js Discord

Write HTML. Render video. Built for agents.

Quickstart | Showcase | Playground | Catalog | Docs | Discord

HyperFrames demo: HTML code on the left transforms into a rendered video on the right

HyperFrames is an open-source framework for turning HTML, CSS, media, and seekable animations into deterministic MP4 videos. Use it locally with the CLI, from AI coding agents with skills, or as the rendering core behind hosted authoring workflows.

Quick Start

With an AI coding agent

Install the HyperFrames skills, then describe the video you want:

npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes

Try a prompt like:

Using /hyperframes, create a 10-second product intro with a fade-in title, a background video, and subtle background music.

The skills teach agents the HyperFrames production loop: plan the video, write valid HTML, wire seekable animations, add media, lint, preview, and render. They work with Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Codex, and other coding agents that support skills.

For visual design handoff workflows, see the Claude Design guide and Open Design guide.

Manually with the CLI

npx hyperframes init my-video
cd my-video
npx hyperframes preview      # preview in browser with live reload
npx hyperframes render       # render to MP4

Requirements: Node.js 22+, FFmpeg

What You Can Build

Need ideas? Browse the Showcase for finished videos you can watch, read, run, and remix.

  • Product launch videos and feature announcements
  • PR walkthroughs with animated code diffs, narration, and captions
  • Data visualizations, chart races, and map animations
  • Social videos with kinetic captions, overlays, and music
  • Docs-to-video, PDF-to-video, and website-to-video explainers
  • Reusable motion graphics for automated content pipelines

Frame.md

frame.md — your design system, ready for video.

Every brand has a design.md. None of them were written for a camera. frame.md is the missing translation layer: it takes your web-context design spec and inverts it for the frame — the same tokens, the same rules, but rewritten so an AI agent can compose a promo video without guessing at scale or reaching for web chrome.

The output is a DESIGN.md superset your whole toolchain can read. Atoms stay sacred. Composition stays free. Numbers come from the script.

Biennale Yellow
Biennale Yellow
BlockFrame
BlockFrame
Blue Professional
Blue Professional
Bold Poster
Bold Poster
Broadside
Broadside
Capsule
Capsule
Cartesian
Cartesian
Cobalt Grid
Cobalt Grid
Coral
Coral
Creative Mode
Creative Mode

Browse and remix them all at hyperframes.dev/design.

How It Works

Define a video as HTML. Add data attributes for timing and tracks. Use GSAP, CSS, Lottie, Three.js, Anime.js, WAAPI, or your own frame adapter for seekable animation.

<div id="stage" data-composition-id="launch" data-start="0" data-width="1920" data-height="1080">
  <video
    class="clip"
    data-start="0"
    data-duration="6"
    data-track-index="0"
    src="intro.mp4"
    muted
    playsinline
  ></video>

  <h1 id="title" class="clip" data-start="1" data-duration="4" data-track-index="1">Launch day</h1>

  <audio
    data-start="0"
    data-duration="6"
    data-track-index="2"
    data-volume="0.5"
    src="music.wav"
  ></audio>

  <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/gsap@3/dist/gsap.min.js"></script>
  <script>
    const tl = gsap.timeline({ paused: true });
    tl.from("#title", { opacity: 0, y: 40, duration: 0.8 }, 1);
    window.__timelines = window.__timelines || {};
    window.__timelines.launch = tl;
  </script>
</div>

Preview instantly in the browser. Render locally or in Docker. The renderer seeks each frame in headless Chrome and encodes the result with FFmpeg, so the same input produces the same video.

HyperFrames Stack

HyperFrames is the open-source rendering engine, plus a growing set of tools around HTML-native video creation.

Piece Status What it does
CLI Available Scaffold, preview, lint, inspect, and render local video projects
Core / Engine / Producer Available Parse compositions, drive headless Chrome, encode video, and mix audio
Catalog Available Reusable blocks and components for transitions, overlays, captions, charts, maps, and effects
Agent skills Available Teach coding agents the video-production patterns that generic web docs miss
Studio Available, evolving Browser surface for previewing and editing compositions
AWS Lambda rendering Available Deploy a distributed render stack and drive renders from your laptop or CI
hyperframes.dev Available Community playground for previewing, iterating, sharing, and rendering HTML-native video projects
frame.md Available Invert your design system for the camera — a DESIGN.md superset an agent can compose video from

Catalog

Install ready-to-use blocks and components:

npx hyperframes add flash-through-white   # shader transition
npx hyperframes add instagram-follow      # social overlay
npx hyperframes add data-chart            # animated chart

Browse the catalog at hyperframes.heygen.com/catalog.

Why HyperFrames?

  • HTML-native: compositions are HTML files with data attributes. No React requirement, no proprietary timeline format.
  • Agent-friendly: agents already write HTML, and the CLI is non-interactive by default.
  • Deterministic: same input, same frames, same output. Built for CI, regression tests, and automated rendering.
  • No build step: an index.html composition plays as-is and can be previewed directly in the browser.
  • Adapter-based animation: bring GSAP, CSS animations, Lottie, Three.js, Anime.js, WAAPI, or a custom runtime.
  • Open source: Apache 2.0 license, with no per-render fees or commercial-use thresholds.

HyperFrames vs Remotion

HyperFrames is inspired by Remotion. Both tools render video with headless Chrome and FFmpeg. The main difference is the authoring model: Remotion's bet is React components; HyperFrames' bet is plain HTML that humans and agents can both write easily.

HyperFrames Remotion
Authoring HTML + CSS + seekable animation React components
Build step None; index.html plays as-is Bundler required
Agent handoff Plain HTML files JSX / React project
Library-clock animations Seekable, frame-accurate via adapters Wall-clock animation patterns need care
Distributed rendering Local and AWS Lambda render paths Remotion Lambda, mature cloud renderer
License Apache 2.0 Source-available Remotion License

Read the full comparison in the HyperFrames vs Remotion guide.

Documentation

Full documentation: hyperframes.heygen.com/introduction

Packages

Package Description
hyperframes CLI for creating, previewing, linting, and rendering compositions
@hyperframes/core Types, parsers, generators, linter, runtime, and frame adapters
@hyperframes/engine Seekable page-to-video capture engine using Puppeteer and FFmpeg
@hyperframes/producer Full rendering pipeline for capture, encode, and audio mix
@hyperframes/studio Browser-based composition editor UI
@hyperframes/player Embeddable <hyperframes-player> web component
@hyperframes/shader-transitions WebGL shader transitions for compositions
@hyperframes/aws-lambda AWS Lambda SDK and deployment surface for distributed renders

Community

HyperFrames is used in production at HeyGen, with community examples from teams like tldraw, TanStack, and others in ADOPTERS.md. Open a PR if your team is using HyperFrames.

Development Note

The repo uses Git LFS for golden regression-test baselines under packages/producer/tests/**/output.mp4 (about 240 MB of .mp4 files). If you're cloning the full repo for development, install Git LFS first:

# macOS
brew install git-lfs

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install git-lfs

# Windows
winget install GitHub.GitLFS

# Then, once per machine
git lfs install

If you only need source files, you can skip LFS content:

GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1 git clone https://github.com/heygen-com/hyperframes.git

License

Apache 2.0

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