Hello HN! WebCodecs landed in chromium recently opening new possibilities for browser-based video editing: instead of relying on cloud-based processing, everything can now be done locally. As I never had a good answer when app developer friends asked me how to quickly edit their screen recordings for appstore listings, I decided to build something with this: a no download, no sign-up, no BS video editor.<p>pros:<p>- Everything is processed locally, nothing is sent to the cloud. This means privacy, but also speed: if you want to extract a 20 seconds part of a 800 MB video file, you don't have to wait for the upload.
- No limits on frame size or video length. It isn't using any cloud resources so no need to put artificial limits on that.
- Precise timing. Seems like a small thing, but surprisingly difficult to get it right with html <video> tags.
- Preview matches exactly the final result: the exact same code generates the preview and the exported video, not some ugly hack attempting to replicate what you see in the browser to the cloud renderer.<p>cons:<p>- It only works properly in Chrome and Edge, with some acceptable fallbacks in Firefox.
- HEVC is not supported by any browser, so for that FFmpeg is needed but that's only fast enough on recent computers
- Everything needs to be loaded into memory. Compared to the cloud-based editors this isn't much of an issue as those typically limit you to 100-200 MB files anyway, but eventually I'd like to use the Filesystem API to make it possible to edit videos of any size.<p>Also there are plenty of more advanced features: unlimited number of layers, motion tracking, blending modes, using LUT files, a not-so-basic painting tool, etc.<p>Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!