Files
Miguel Ángel 4c72ba4a36 fix(engine): fall back to screenshot mode when system Chrome is not headless-shell
The engine assumed any binary passed via PRODUCER_HEADLESS_SHELL_PATH
supported the HeadlessExperimental.beginFrame CDP command. When the
CLI resolved system Chrome (e.g. /usr/bin/google-chrome) instead of
chrome-headless-shell, the render would silently hang for 120s
then timeout — the #1 new-user friction point.

Now checks the binary path for "chrome-headless-shell" before
selecting beginframe capture mode. System Chrome falls back to
screenshot mode which works universally.

Reproducer:
  # On a machine with system Chrome but no chrome-headless-shell cached
  npx hyperframes init test --template blank --non-interactive
  cd test && npx hyperframes render --output out.mp4
  # Was: 120s hang, then "Timed out after waiting 120000ms"
  # Now: renders successfully via screenshot mode
2026-03-30 18:30:36 +02:00
..
2026-03-29 10:10:03 +00:00
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