Rendering using SSR APIs

The NPM package @remotion/renderer provides you with "Server-Side Rendering" APIs for rendering media programmatically.
These functions can be used in Node.js and Bun.

Rendering a video takes three steps:

1

Creating a Remotion Bundle

2

Select the composition to render and calculate its metadata

3

Render the video, audio, still or image sequence.

Example script

Follow this commented example to see how to render a video:

render.mjs
tsx
import { bundle } from "@remotion/bundler";
import { renderMedia, selectComposition } from "@remotion/renderer";
import path from "path";
 
// The composition you want to render
const compositionId = "HelloWorld";
 
// You only have to create a bundle once, and you may reuse it
// for multiple renders that you can parametrize using input props.
const bundleLocation = await bundle({
  entryPoint: path.resolve("./src/index.ts"),
  // If you have a webpack override in remotion.config.ts, pass it here as well.
  webpackOverride: (config) => config,
});
 
// Parametrize the video by passing props to your component.
const inputProps = {
  foo: "bar",
};
 
// Get the composition you want to render. Pass `inputProps` if you
// want to customize the duration or other metadata.
const composition = await selectComposition({
  serveUrl: bundleLocation,
  id: compositionId,
  inputProps,
});
 
// Render the video. Pass the same `inputProps` again
// if your video is parametrized with data.
await renderMedia({
  composition,
  serveUrl: bundleLocation,
  codec: "h264",
  outputLocation: `out/${compositionId}.mp4`,
  inputProps,
});
 
console.log("Render done!");

render.mjs
tsx
import { bundle } from "@remotion/bundler";
import { renderMedia, selectComposition } from "@remotion/renderer";
import path from "path";
 
// The composition you want to render
const compositionId = "HelloWorld";
 
// You only have to create a bundle once, and you may reuse it
// for multiple renders that you can parametrize using input props.
const bundleLocation = await bundle({
  entryPoint: path.resolve("./src/index.ts"),
  // If you have a webpack override in remotion.config.ts, pass it here as well.
  webpackOverride: (config) => config,
});
 
// Parametrize the video by passing props to your component.
const inputProps = {
  foo: "bar",
};
 
// Get the composition you want to render. Pass `inputProps` if you
// want to customize the duration or other metadata.
const composition = await selectComposition({
  serveUrl: bundleLocation,
  id: compositionId,
  inputProps,
});
 
// Render the video. Pass the same `inputProps` again
// if your video is parametrized with data.
await renderMedia({
  composition,
  serveUrl: bundleLocation,
  codec: "h264",
  outputLocation: `out/${compositionId}.mp4`,
  inputProps,
});
 
console.log("Render done!");

This flow is customizable. Click on one of the SSR APIs to read about its options:

• getCompositions() - Get a list of available compositions from a Remotion project.
• selectComposition() - Get a list of available compositions from a Remotion project.
• renderMedia() - Render a video or audio.
• renderFrames() - Render an image sequence.
• renderStill() - Render a still image.
• stitchFramesToVideo() - Encode a video based on an image sequence
• openBrowser() - Share a browser instance across function calls for improved performance.

Linux Dependencies

If you are on Linux, Chrome Headless Shell requires some shared libraries to be installed. See Linux Dependencies.

SSR APIs in Next.js

If you are using Next.js, you will not be able to use @remotion/bundler because of the limitations explained in Can I render videos in Next.js? Refer to the page for possible alternatives.
We recommend Lambda for use in Next.js.

See also

• Server-side rendering