Introducing h264-mp4-encoder

Encode directly to H264 and ouput as an MP4 in node or on the web with WebAssembly! Works with the HTML5 Canvas :)

See The Simple Demo or checkout the animation site it was designed for: Gifygram!

npm install h264-mp4-encoder

Example

Web:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/h264-mp4-encoder/embuild/dist/h264-mp4-encoder.web.js"></script>

JavaScript:

const HME = require("h264-mp4-encoder");

TypeScript:

import * as HME from "h264-mp4-encoder";

Dynamic Import / Webpack:

const HME = await import("h264-mp4-encoder");
// To only import the type in TypeScript:
import("h264-mp4-encoder").H264MP4Encoder;

Example:

HME.createH264MP4Encoder().then(encoder => {
    // Must be a multiple of 2.
    encoder.width = 100;
    encoder.height = 100;
    encoder.initialize();
    // Add a single gray frame, the alpha is ignored.
    encoder.addFrameRgba(new Uint8Array(encoder.width * encoder.height * 4).fill(128))
    // For canvas:
    // encoder.addFrameRgba(ctx.getImageData(0, 0, encoder.width * encoder.height).data);
    encoder.finalize();
    const uint8Array = encoder.FS.readFile(encoder.outputFilename);
    console.log(uint8Array);
    encoder.delete();
})

You can also use await:

const encoder = await HME.createH264MP4Encoder();

Use with Webpack

When using this library with Webpack to package onto a browser environment it will report an error because it cannot resolve "fs" which is used by Emscripten's node implementation. To fix this add this to your webpack.config.js:

  "node": {
    "fs": "empty"
  },

API

/** Construct the H264MP4Encoder. Waits for the WASM to complete loading before returning. */
async function createH264MP4Encoder(): Promise<H264MP4Encoder>;

interface H264MP4Encoder {
    /**
     * Name of the file that we output.
     * After `encoder.finalize()` use `encoder.FS.readFile(encoder.outputFilename)` after `finalize`.
     * @default "output.mp4"
     */
    outputFilename: string;

    /**
     * Width of the input frames and output video. Must be a multiple of 2. Required.
     * @default 0
     */
    width: number;

    /**
     * Height of the input frames and output video. Must be a multiple of 2. Required.
     * @default 0
     */
    height: number;

    /**
     * Frame rate of the output video.
     * @default 30
     */
    frameRate: number;

    /**
     * The bitrate in kbps relative to the frame_rate. Overwrites quantization_parameter if not 0.
     * @default 0
     */
    kbps: number;

    /**
     * Speed where 0 means best quality and 10 means fastest speed [0..10].
     * @default 0
     */
    speed: number;

    /**
     * Higher means better compression, and lower means better quality [10..51].
     * @default 33
     */
    quantizationParameter: number;

    /**
     * How often a keyframe occurs (key frame period, also known as GOP).
     * @default 20
     */
    groupOfPictures: number;

    /**
     * Use temporal noise supression.
     * @default false
     */
    temporalDenoise: boolean;

    /**
     * Each NAL unit will be approximately capped at this size (0 means unlimited).
     * @default 0
     */
    desiredNaluBytes: number;

    /**
     * Prints extra debug information.
     * @default false
     */
    debug: boolean;

    /** Initialize the encoder. After calling this, all parameters above will be readonly. */
    initialize(): void;

    /** Add a frame in YUV format (expected size: width * height * 3 / 2). */
    addFrameYuv(buffer: ArrayBuffer | Uint8Array | Uint8ClampedArray | Int8Array | string): void;

    /**
     * Add a frame in RGBA format (expected size: width * height * 4).
     * Alpha is ignored but is kept for convenience of working with the HTML5 canvas.getImageData().
     */
    addFrameRgba(buffer: ArrayBuffer | Uint8Array | Uint8ClampedArray | Int8Array | string): void;

    /** Finish outputting the video to the `outputFilename`. */
    finalize(): void;

    /** Delete this object and free all resources. Should not be used again. */
    delete(): void;

    /**
     * A reference to Emscripten's virtual file system.
     * The output files will be written here under the provided `outputFilename`.
     * This file system is *shared* between all H264MP4Encoders.
     */
    FS: typeof FS;
}

How does it work?

This library brings together the public domain minih264 H264 encoder, as well as the MPL 1.1 licenced libmp4v2 to write the H264 NAL unit data into an MP4 file. Both of these are compiled in Emscripten within a Docker image and Webpacked to create easily importable modules. This repo uses submodules that are forks of those two libraries with changes for Emscripten (and to comply with the MPL 1.1 license).

Where is the WebAssembly?

To make packaging considerably easier, I built with Emscripten's -s SINGLE_FILE=1 which base64 encodes the wasm inside the JavaScript file. You're welcome to remove this option to get a wasm file, but you'll need to handle Webpack importing as well as the locateFile within the Emscripten Module object.

Building on Ubuntu

You must have docker installed, however all other depdendencies for building for node/web are within the Docker container).

./build.sh

To run the C++ code natively (not using Emscripten) you must have cmake and a compiler:

git submodule update --init --recursive
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build --parallel .