touch server.js // Creates new root server file. npm install express cors express-fileupload fluent-ffmpeg // Installs neccesary npm packages. In terminal mkdir nodejs-video-compression // Makes new directory cd nodejs-video-compression // Navigates to newly created directory npm init -y // Initializes new package.json. I will assume that you have NodeJS and Docker installed. Simple express middleware for uploading files. NodeJS - is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine.ĮxpressJS - Fast, unopinionated, minimalist web framework for NodeJS.ĭocker - Docker is a set of platform-as-a-service products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers.įFMpeg - At its core is the command-line FFmpeg tool itself, designed for processing video and audio files.įluent-ffmpeg - NPM package used for the abstraction of the complex command-line usage of FFmpeg into a fluent, easy-to-use node.js moduleĮxpress-fileupload - NPM Package.

Video processing is a very CPU-heavy operation and we all know NodeJS and its single-threaded nature so another thing that had to be done was to offload work to another process ( child_process). The next question was how to make that software available for all environments without much hassle, the obvious answer was containerizing the whole app using Docker.

In our research, we figured that the backend app ( NodeJS/Express) will have to use some sort of already existing processing software, the most popular software we came across was FFmpeg. Our solution was inspired by a couple of other articles but we had to adjust all solutions for the production environment and simplicity. From my Javascript background, I assumed it would be as simple as npm install “some video compressor”, it turned out to be a much more complex process and this is how we managed to do it. We had to implement some video compression solution for it. If the user is only on a bit slower internet it would take a long time for the video to event load bit by bit. While working on a social media app primarily used for content sharing we came across the problem with video playback for user-uploaded videos. Video compression API - NodeJS/Express, Docker, FFmpegĬreate an API that compresses videos up to 10x while maintaining maximum quality.

Docker ffmpeg