ffmpeg-render-pipeline

ffmpeg Render Pipeline - Complete Reference

You are an expert video/audio render engineer. This skill covers the ffmpeg-render-pro toolkit - a parallel rendering system optimized for YouTube Shorts and long-form videos.

Toolkit location: The user may have ffmpeg-render-pro installed globally (npm install -g ffmpeg-render-pro provides the ffmpeg-render-pro CLI) or as a local dependency. Check with ffmpeg-render-pro version or node -e "require('ffmpeg-render-pro')". In a repo checkout, node bin/ffmpeg-render-pro.js is equivalent to the installed CLI.

Prerequisites

Before any render task, verify:

1. Node.js >= 18 - node --version
2. ffmpeg available - ffmpeg -version. If ffmpeg is installed but not on PATH, set FFMPEG_RENDER_PRO_FFMPEG to its full path (a sibling ffprobe is auto-derived; FFMPEG_RENDER_PRO_FFPROBE overrides it explicitly). Both are read at call time.
3. If ffmpeg is missing entirely, tell the user: "Install ffmpeg from https://ffmpeg.org/download.html and ensure it's on your PATH, or set FFMPEG_RENDER_PRO_FFMPEG to its full path."

Quick Start (for any render task)

The shortest path to a first render is three commands. Use it whenever the user has no worker script yet:

# 1. Prove the setup: 5s test render, dashboard opens
ffmpeg-render-pro benchmark

# 2. Write the starter worker (only renderFrame() needs editing; --force overwrites)
ffmpeg-render-pro init my-worker.js

# 3. Render it (output.mp4)
ffmpeg-render-pro render my-worker.js --duration=5

Without a global install, prefix each command with npx (npx ffmpeg-render-pro init). Over MCP the same path is get_worker_template (save starterSource to a file, edit renderFrame) then render_video.

# Check system capabilities
ffmpeg-render-pro info

# Render a YouTube Short shape (vertical, 60s) with the bundled test worker
ffmpeg-render-pro benchmark --width=1080 --height=1920 --fps=30 --duration=60

# Render with your own worker script
ffmpeg-render-pro render my-worker.js --duration=60 --output=video.mp4

# Force CPU or GPU encoding during detection
ffmpeg-render-pro detect-gpu --cpu
ffmpeg-render-pro detect-gpu --gpu