Curious about the headless story. The "Photopea of video editing" comparison is apt — Photopea's real moat ended up being the API and programmatic access, not just the browser UI. Companies embed it for automated image processing workflows.
For a browser-native NLE, the killer feature might not be the timeline UI — it could be exposing the WGPU rendering pipeline as an API that other tools can call. Imagine CI pipelines that render video assets without needing FFmpeg on the server.
Good point. I agree that could be a very interesting direction.
I have used Remotion for years because the DX is great, but the performance and overhead is significant. Even something like attaching subtitles to a video can take around 10x more time and resources than bare FFmpeg because of the chromium layer.
A headless version of this wgpu renderer with a clean API and eventually a nicer DX layer such as a react renderer could be a strong replacement for that kind of workflow.
I've been using kdenlive and it is functional as an open source video editor. I don't know if kdenlive supports shared assets and projects, but this feels like something this project could offer and exceed expectations. Is that on the roadmap?
Yes, that was part of the thinking behind the licensing choice. The goal was to keep the engine itself open source, while creating opportunities to monetize adjacent offerings like cloud file management, sharing, AI editing, and other higher-level capabilities.
I like the promise, but the hill is very steep and I don't see much on delivery here. Very hopeful, but I would rather see this kind of thing launch significantly further than where it is at. This appears to be a good base, now let's see it again when there is Text support, animations, transitions, filters, etc.
We actually already support text, transitions, and animation of basic properties as well as some filters. I would be interested to hear more about your use case and which capabilities you felt were missing from what you saw.
Tried it in Firefox and it was working for a few minutes and then managed to crash the whole browser. Definitely a firefox and/or gpu driver bug though. I can't wait for WebGPU browser/platform support to get a bit more mature, because it's awesome (although the security implications do make me nervous).
If you want free, Resolve will run circles around whatever open source thing you can find. No need for WGPU, it just runs the GPU.
Sadly, things like this just put a bad taste in my mouth about the whole concept of running code in a browser like this. It's buggy as hell. It doesn't run in all browsers. And I really have to ask why we think the browser is the place to run this. We've moved from Java and now to WASM in a browser, but only some browsers.
+1 for Davinci Resolve. I used the free version for years (Windows and Mac versions) before finally picking up a copy of Studio which is still very reasonably priced and is a flat fee.
I think you selected the wrong license. Your license currently as written actually forbids _using_ the software for a commercial purpose, eg if someone monetizes a video edited using your software, they are in violation of your license, which is not what you want.
Look at something like the Hashicorp BSL [1] for inspiration on crafting a license that forbids specific commercialization of the software itself.
Great question! I actually have built a poc that is not released yet. It's on the roadmap. It requires some tooling for the devs building these plugins like a CLI for building the WASM binaries, bundling, manifests, etc.
The current poc still has significant performance overhead, and that overhead grows as the plugin system becomes more powerful. If plugins are only allowed to apply a WGSL shader, the performance impact is almost negligible. But features that require broader access to timeline data, such as time shifts, speed ramps, or full timeline transformations, become much more expensive and make zero-copy architectures harder to reason about.
What would be really awesome is if it could use the server its hosted on's GPUs. I have a multi GPU server and it would be great to be able to edit videos from my table or couch without spinning up my laptop so hard.
Seems interesting. I had not seen Omniclip specifically. But like most web-based NLEs I've seen, its UX feels unfamiliar. My goal was to build a desktop-grade professional editor that feels familiar to editors like Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Final Cut Pro, rather than reinventing the editing experience.
Really cool! It may not replace a dedicated NLE for professional editors, but I love that it's a fully functional NLE that you could drop into an existing web app that handles video.
Yes, but the goal is to become the photopea of video editing. Something quick that you can launch via web that can support 80% of the day to day use cases.
I see. I haven't decided on the commercial license yet. This might be temporary. I started this as part of another for-profit side project (for dubbing videos with AI). I may change the license later as the quote unquote "copyright owner". If I see the open-source community is active and finds it useful, I'd switch to a free-er license. Things are not super clear yet to me re what can be done with a web based video editor.
I personally don't see a problem with having the code be for non-commercial use only, but your hosted instance probably should allow commercial use. Otherwise I don't see how you're going to become the Photopea of video, which you stated as a goal.
I want to support some colleagues with automating some of the setup of routine video editing. Can't consider this impressive work without that clarity!
Great project. The last time someone did this idea well they got acquired by Microsoft. Clipchamp has since been enshittified, making them ripe for disruption. The wheel continues to turn…
If you make money at it, you're professional. People are making so much money being content creators and don't give a damn about your definition of needing Pr or FCP to be professional.
It doesn't take much functionality to make jump cut videos and silly zooms an other non-traditional editorial styles that are the new normal for content.
However, as a professional editor, I laugh at these attempts using professional in the description when you're telling me to edit in a browser. <face_palm> It's great that they want to create a new thing and try some experimental stuff, but it's not going any where near my use of professional. Also, the landing page is dry as can be and not really informative. It's the visual equivalent of bullet points. What codecs does it support? What level of audio features are available. The lame video is just some panning shot. There's no editorial features being demoed at all. Does the timeline behave like FCP elastic or a more traditional timeline? What professional tools are available? Hmm, no data available, so I guess we'll have to just play with it. Oops, browser not compatible. Thanks for playing.
it's for this:
https://ubernaut.github.io/recordMyScreen/
which uses a the wasm build of ffmpeg.
For a browser-native NLE, the killer feature might not be the timeline UI — it could be exposing the WGPU rendering pipeline as an API that other tools can call. Imagine CI pipelines that render video assets without needing FFmpeg on the server.
I have used Remotion for years because the DX is great, but the performance and overhead is significant. Even something like attaching subtitles to a video can take around 10x more time and resources than bare FFmpeg because of the chromium layer.
A headless version of this wgpu renderer with a clean API and eventually a nicer DX layer such as a react renderer could be a strong replacement for that kind of workflow.
It violates point 1,5 and 6 of the open source definition https://opensource.org/osd
Sadly, things like this just put a bad taste in my mouth about the whole concept of running code in a browser like this. It's buggy as hell. It doesn't run in all browsers. And I really have to ask why we think the browser is the place to run this. We've moved from Java and now to WASM in a browser, but only some browsers.
Look at something like the Hashicorp BSL [1] for inspiration on crafting a license that forbids specific commercialization of the software itself.
[1] https://www.hashicorp.com/en/bsl
Would you like to share your development experience? I suggest creating a CONTRIBUTING.md and enabling discussions if you are open to PRs.
The current poc still has significant performance overhead, and that overhead grows as the plugin system becomes more powerful. If plugins are only allowed to apply a WGSL shader, the performance impact is almost negligible. But features that require broader access to timeline data, such as time shifts, speed ramps, or full timeline transformations, become much more expensive and make zero-copy architectures harder to reason about.
I want to support some colleagues with automating some of the setup of routine video editing. Can't consider this impressive work without that clarity!
Is there similar project for image editing?
Just basic features:
- cropping
- rotating
- brightness & contrast
UI is rather confusing.
It doesn't take much functionality to make jump cut videos and silly zooms an other non-traditional editorial styles that are the new normal for content.
However, as a professional editor, I laugh at these attempts using professional in the description when you're telling me to edit in a browser. <face_palm> It's great that they want to create a new thing and try some experimental stuff, but it's not going any where near my use of professional. Also, the landing page is dry as can be and not really informative. It's the visual equivalent of bullet points. What codecs does it support? What level of audio features are available. The lame video is just some panning shot. There's no editorial features being demoed at all. Does the timeline behave like FCP elastic or a more traditional timeline? What professional tools are available? Hmm, no data available, so I guess we'll have to just play with it. Oops, browser not compatible. Thanks for playing.