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Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

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Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#1

Post by kolx »

Hi HN, I built VidStudio, a privacy focused video editor that runs in the browser. I tried to keep it as frictionless as possible, so there are no accounts and no uploads. Everything is persisted on your machine.

Some of the features: multi-track timeline, frame accurate seek, MP4 export, audio, video, image, and text tracks, and a WebGL backed canvas where available. It also works on mobile.

Under the hood, WebCodecs handles frame decode for timeline playback and scrubbing, which is what makes seeking responsive since decode runs on the hardware decoder when the browser supports it. FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly handles final encode, format conversion, and anything WebCodecs does not cover. Rendering goes through Pixi.js on a WebGL canvas, with a software fallback when WebGL is not available. Projects live in IndexedDB and the heavy work runs in Web Workers so the UI stays responsive during exports.

Happy to answer technical questions about the tradeoffs involved in keeping the whole pipeline client-side. Any feedback welcome.

Link: https://vidstudio.app/video-editor

Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files
vidstudio.app

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#2

Post by elpocko »

> FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly handles final encode

FFmpeg's license is the LGPL 2.1. VidStudio looks like closed source software, I couldn't see any indication that it's free software. You're distributing this software to run in the client's browser. I'm not a lawyer but I think you're in breach of the terms of the LGPL.

https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#3

Post by senko »

elpocko wrote: post #2

> FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly handles final encode FFmpeg's license is the LGPL 2.1. VidStudio looks like closed source software, I couldn't see any indication that it's free software. You're distributing this software to run in the client's browser. I'm not a lawyer but I think you're in breach of the terms of the LGPL. https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html

LGPL permits that.

However, some popular codecs use GPL, which, if enabled, would require to distribute the rest of the code under it as well.

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#4

Post by [deleted] »

elpocko wrote: post #2

> FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly handles final encode FFmpeg's license is the LGPL 2.1. VidStudio looks like closed source software, I couldn't see any indication that it's free software. You're distributing this software to run in the client's browser. I'm not a lawyer but I think you're in breach of the terms of the LGPL. https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#6

Post by spuzvabob »

I've built a similar video editor and have been considering pure client side implementation vs transcoding into a known format beforehand, went with transcoding for wider format support and easier video playback implementation.

I'm interested in how you handle demuxing different container formats any which ones are supported?

I get "Audio decode failed: your browser cannot decode the audio in "41b1aee9-ac65-43f6-b020-e8fed77c3c72_webm.bin". Try re-encoding the file with AAC audio." for a WEBM with no audio.

h264/aac MP4 works, is that demuxed with mp4box.js? I noticed seeking (clicking or scrubbing on timeline) initializes a new VideoDecoder and destroys the previous one for every new frame, leading to abysmal performance as you lose decoder state and a lot of decoding work has to be repeated. Plus the decoder reinitialization time. Is that because the demuxing logic doesn't give precise access to encoded frames? iirc mp4box.js didn't support that last time I checked.

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#7

Post by prhn »

elpocko wrote: post #2

> FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly handles final encode FFmpeg's license is the LGPL 2.1. VidStudio looks like closed source software, I couldn't see any indication that it's free software. You're distributing this software to run in the client's browser. I'm not a lawyer but I think you're in breach of the terms of the LGPL. https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html

Closed source is fine, but there are a few other things that are required of LGPL, some of which are

- Provide links to the source of the version of ffmpeg you used in your code

- User should be able to replace the ffmpeg libs with his own compatible builds if you're using dynamically linked libs. For statically linked libs, you need to provide the tools to re-link against a compatible build.

I went through an LGPL review recently so some of this is fresh in my memory, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#8

Post by elpocko »

senko wrote: post #3
elpocko wrote: post #2

> FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly handles final encode FFmpeg's license is the LGPL 2.1. VidStudio looks like closed source software, I couldn't see any indication that it's free software. You're distributing this software to run in the client's browser. I'm not a lawyer but I think you're in breach of the terms of the LGPL. https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html

LGPL permits that. However, some popular codecs use GPL, which, if enabled, would require to distribute the rest of the code under it as well.

LGPL permits you to distribute binaries, but you can't distribute the software as an opaque binary blob with no reasonable way to modify it. What even is the equivalent of a shared library that a user can replace when software runs in the browser?

Anyway, OP doesn't do most of the things FFmpeg lists under their "License Compliance Checklist".

Re: Show HN: VidStudio, a browser based video editor that doesn't upload your files

#9

Post by CodesInChaos »

elpocko wrote: post #2

> FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly handles final encode FFmpeg's license is the LGPL 2.1. VidStudio looks like closed source software, I couldn't see any indication that it's free software. You're distributing this software to run in the client's browser. I'm not a lawyer but I think you're in breach of the terms of the LGPL. https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html

It should be possible to comply with LGPL without publishing the source code of the whole application. Either by running the application and ffmpeg in different isolates (wasm processes), or by offering a way to merge (link) the wasm code of the closed-source application with a user compiled FFmpeg wasm build.

Different isolates might even be enough to satisfy GPL, similar to how you can invoke FFmpeg as a command line tool from a closed application. Though that feels like legally shaky ground.

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