gsap-video-export

Expertly and easily export GreenSock (GSAP) animation to video.

gsap-video-export is a simple tool for exporting your GreenSock (GSAP) animations to video. Create video animations with the framework you know and love and use them in your video projects or share them on social media with ease.

What makes gsap-video-export different from other solutions is rather than simply recording an animation as it plays, it instead steps through exporting frame by frame to ensure the result is seamless.

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Contents

• gsap-video-export
  • Contents
  • What's New
    • 2.0.3 🆕
    • 2.0.2 🆕
    • 2.0.1 🆕
    • 2.0.0 🆕
  • Getting Started
    • Installation
    • Usage
      • Command Line
      • ESM Module 🆕
    • Options
  • Examples
    • Page Export
    • Custom Timeline
    • Export Element
    • Twitter Export
    • Coloured Background
    • Lossless* Export
    • Timeweb Frame Advancement 🆕
    • Alpha Transparency 🆕
  • Advanced
    • Cookies 🆕
    • Chrome 🆕
    • Headless 🆕
  • FAQ
  • Sponsors
    • Bonus
  • Author

What's New

2.0.3 🆕

• Added prepare-page and prepare-frame options, allowing a script to be run once at page load or before each frame.
• Removed references to Twitter.
• Fixed the missing default video format when used as an ESM module.

2.0.2 🆕

• When used an ESM module the additional script can now be passed as a function as well as string pointing to an external js file.

2.0.1 🆕

• Fixed an issue that was causing blocked access to public codepen URLs.
• Support for videos with alpha transparency.
• Improved clean up of temporary files.

2.0.0 🆕

• ESM module support.
• Puppeteer updated to the latest version, and puppeteer-stealth has been swapped for rebrowser-puppeteer for better bot detection avoidance.
• Added support for timeweb frame advancement to allow for capturing of elements animated outside of the GSAP timeline.
• Optionally use the system installed version of Chrome for future compatibility.
• Optionally disable headless mode for debugging.
• Supply your own cookie JSON file to bypass cookie pop-ups and authentication.

Getting Started

Installation

gsap-video-export is a command line tool that can be installed directly via NPM.

npm install -g gsap-video-export

Usage

Command Line

Once installed the tool can be used as per the following example.

gsap-video-export <url>

When using CodePen URLs gsap-video-export will automatically redirect to the full page debug preview.

ESM Module 🆕

This library can now be imported as an ESM module, opening up gsap-video-export to be used seamlessly as part of a production pipeline.

import { videoExport } from 'gsap-video-export'

const videoDetails = await videoExport({
  url: <url>,
})

console.log(videoDetails)
/* { file: filename (string), exportTime: seconds (number), renderTime: seconds (number) */

When running as an ESM module the output will be silent and any issues willl throw an error. You can check for problems ahead of time with the info option and wrapping the function with a try/catch block.

import { videoExport } from 'gsap-video-export'

let videoDetails
try {
  videoDetails = await videoExport({
    url: <url>,
    info: true
  })
} catch (err) {
  console.log(err)
}

console.log(videoDetails)
/**
 * {
 *  duration: seconds (number),
 *  frames: frames (number),
 *  gsap: version (string),
 *  timeline: timeline (string)
 * }
 */

Options

All additional options are available when used as a module or via the CLI.

| CLI Argument | Module Option | Category | Description | Type | Default Value | | ---------------------------------- | ----------------------- | ------------ | ------------------------------------------------- | -------------------- | ---------------------------- | | --help | | General | Show help | boolean | | | --version | | General | Show version number | boolean | | | -q, --verbose | verbose | General | Verbose output. | boolean | true | | -i, --info | info | General | Information only. | boolean | false | | -s, --prepare-page, --script | preparePage, script | Browser | Custom script to run once on page load. | string, function | | | --prepare-frame | prepareFrame | Browser | Custom script to run before every frame. | string, function | | | -S, --selector | selector | Browser | DOM selector of element to capture. | string | "document" | | -t, --timeline | timeline | Browser | GSAP timeline object. | string | "gsap" | | -z, --scale | scale | Browser | Scale factor for higher quality capture. | number | 1 | | -V, --viewport | viewport | Browser | Browser viewport size. | string | "1920x1080" | | --frame-start | frameStart | Browser | The frame number to begin capturing. | number | | | --frame-end | frameEnd | Browser | The frame number to stop capturing. | number | | | --chrome | chrome | Browser | Automatically use the system installed Chrome. | boolean | false | | --cookies | cookies | Browser | Cookie JSON file in a Puppeteer supported format. | string | | | -a, --advance | advance | Browser | The method to use for advancing frames. | string | gsap | | -h, --headless | headless | Browser | Headless mode. | boolean | true | | -p, --color | color | Video | Padding color. | string | "auto" | | -c, --codec | codec | Video | Video codec. | string | "libx264" | | -C, --format | format | Video | Video format. | string | "mp4" | | -e, --input-options | inputOptions | Video | Additional FFmpeg input options. | string | | | -E, --output-options | outputOptions | Video | Additional FFmpeg output options. | string | "-pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 18" | | -o, --output | output | Video | Output filename. | string | "video.mp4" | | -f, --fps | fps | Video | Target framerate. | number | 60 | | -v, --resolution | resolution | Video | Output resolution. | string | "auto" |

Examples

A huge thanks to @cassiecodes for letting me use her incredible GreenSock pens to demonstrate gsap-video-export.

Page Export

Supplying gsap-video-export with a URL will generate a 1920x1080 video file of the viewport, scrubbing through the GSAP global timeline object at 60fps.

# Animation by @cassiecodes
gsap-video-export https://codepen.io/cassie-codes/pen/RwGEewq

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49479599/154277839-551542f6-9236-48cf-b3e1-b55484475e22.mp4

Custom Timeline

By default gsap-video-export will scrub through the global GSAP timeline object, although there may be instances where you want to specify which timeline you want to record.

In the example below the global timeline fails due an infinite loop.

# Animation by @SeeMax
gsap-video-export https://codepen.io/SeeMax/pen/bGoxMwj

Using the --timeline -t argument you can specify a different timeline variable to use instead.

# Animation by @SeeMax
gsap-video-export https://codepen.io/SeeMax/pen/bGoxMwj -t tl

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49479599/154277884-148c21b5-2d23-48bf-8e2f-5321c64c0c62.mp4

Export Element

With the --selector -S argument you can specifiy a DOM selector to capture a specific element. The resulting output video will be the same dimensions as the as the selected element.

gsap-video-export also allows you to run custom JavaScript on the page before the video capture begins with the --script -s argument. In this example a custom.js file is supplied with a snippet to remove the corner banner from the DOM.

// custom.js
document.querySelector('img[alt="HTML5"]').remove()

# Animation by GreenSock
gsap-video-export https://codepen.io/GreenSock/pen/DzXpme -S "#featureBox" -s custom.js 

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49479599/154277903-fd6cfa40-af95-4ef9-83c6-89db2e8a098a.mp4

Twitter Export

In this example if you visit the pen you might notice the animation is offscreen. This isn't an issue as gsap-video-export will automatically scroll the selected element into the viewport.

It's possible to easily export videos for social media such as Twitter. Using the default settings gsap-video-export will automatically output video in a format that conforms to Twitter's video specifications.

To render your video at the desired resolution use the --resolution -v argument with a <width>x<height> string. For Twitter I recommend using 1080x1080.

# Video by @cassiecodes
gsap-video-export https://codepen.io/cassie-codes/pen/mNWxpL -S svg -v 1080x1080

The example above will select the SVG element on the page, with the resulting video resized and automatically padded to 1080x1080.

As the SVG element itself is not 1080 pixels in either direction it will ultimately be scaled up to hit the target resolution losing quality.

Using the --scale -z you can supply a scale factor allowing you to capture the element at a much higher resolution resulting in better video quality.

# Video by @cassiecodes
gsap-video-export https://codepen.io/cassie-codes/pen/mNWxpL -S svg -v 1080x1080 -z 2

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49479599/154277921-0c5dfb39-9012-43c8-ac76-416a95c9bab0.mp4

Coloured Background

gsap-video-export will automatically detect the background colour to autopad the animation with.

It uses the first pixel of the first frame to determine colour of the background. You can override this with --color -p and supply a custom hex value.

# Video by @cassiecodes
gsap-video-export https://codepen.io/cassie-codes/pen/VwZBjRq -S svg -z 2 -v 1080x1080

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49479599/154277938-1db498b8-661b-4772-ad56-a50964d5c93e.mp4

Lossless* Export

*When creating a video with the true lossless setting -crf 0 it will preserve the colour space of the source PNGs and won't be compatible with some media players. For compatibility simply setting the best lossy setting -crf 1 is enough to create a near lossless video that's compatible with most media players.

The --output-options -E argument will take a string of FFmpeg output arguments to allow a lot of flexability over the final render. This should be supplied last in the list of command line arguments after --.

# Video by @cassiecodes
gsap-video-export https://codepen.io/cassie-codes/pen/VweQjBw -S svg -z 2 -v 1920x1080 -- -E "'-pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 1'"

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/49479599/154278049-ae6d585b-9491-45a8-bd2a-ea1f741580e2.mp4

Timeweb Frame Advancement 🆕

The default frame advancement method for gsap-video-export steps through a GSAP timeline to create a silky smooth video.

Unfortunately if there are animations present that are not tied to the GSAP timeline then it may render incorrectly. Timeweb is now included as an alternative method for advancing frames which largely resolves this issue.

Using https://nodcoding.com/ as an example, even though the site is built with GSAP there is no exposed timeline so the standard usage of gsap-video-export will fail to start.

Let's inject a simple GSAP timeline that scrolls the page to the bottom and use the default gsap frame advancement to render the video.

gsap-video-export http://nodcoding.com/ --script "./scroll.js"

The video below has issues with the timing of animations that exist outside of the scroll timeline.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/be461336-3605-4a81-af35-de962e5671bc

Using the timeweb frame advancement option the native time handling is overwritten allowing us to globally advance the browser frame by frame.

gsap-video-export http://nodcoding.com/ --script "./scroll.js" --advance timeweb

In the output below the scroll timeline and other animated elements are now captured perfectly.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b8a5b4c6-33ab-4e56-8218-b1761ab7b1c0

Alpha Transparency 🆕

gsap-video-export can now output video with alpha transparency when paired with compatible ffmpeg settings.

Setting the --color argument to transparent will pad the video with transparent pixels gsap-video-export will also respect transparent backgrounds.

There should be no background-color set on the for gsap-video-export to correctly render transparency.

gsap-video-export https://codepen.io/defaced/pen/GRVbwNQ -S svg -v 1080x1080 -o video.mov -p transparent -c prores_ks -C mov -- -E "'-pix_fmt yuva444p10le'"

The important part of the command is -o video.mov -p transparent -c prores_ks -C mov -- -E "'-pix_fmt yuva444p10le'" which sets ffmpeg to use a video format that's compatible with transparency and tells gsap-video-export to respect transparent backgrounds.

Advanced

Cookies 🆕

If you need to authenticate your session or disable a cookie popup then it's possible to supply your own cookies as a JSON file.

I recommend using this Chrome Extension to export them in a compatible format. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/export-cookie-json-file-f/nmckokihipjgplolmcmjakknndddifde?hl=en

Chrome 🆕

It's now possible to use the system installed version of Chrome by adding the --chrome flag. The library will automatically find the Chrome install location and use that instead of the Chrome for Testing binary that's supplied with Puppeteer.

gsap-video-export <url> --chrome

Headless 🆕

If you need to see what's happening 'on page' to debug issues you can disable headless mode to inspect the Chrome window.

gsap-video-export <url> --headless false

FAQ

Why does my video fail with the duration error INFINITE?

This can happen on some videos where the selected timeline infinitely repeats and GSAP reports a duration in the thousands of hours.

gsap-video-export will not attempt to capture any video over an hour and will report the INFINITE error.

How can I disable other on screen elements?

You can supply a custom .js file with the --script argument which runs before the capture begins giving you the ability to manipulate the DOM.

Why does my video not render as expected?

gsap-video-export works by stepping manually through the specified timeline exporting each individual frame. As a rule of thumb if you can scrub through your timeline manually in GSAP you're not going to have any issues with the default gsap frame advance method.

If you're triggering animations that are not locked to the GSAP timeline, or your page contains other active elements such as video then try the timeweb frame advance method, which instead overwrites native time handling in a web page to allow the capture of each frame.

Why does my timeline fail?

gsap-video-export can access block scoped let and const variables and variables on the global scope. If your timeline variable is not exposed at that level then gsap-video-export will not be able to access it.

Consider moving your timeline to a scope the tool can access.

Sponsors

If you find this project useful please considering sponsoring me on GitHub Sponsors and help support the work that goes into creating and maintaining my projects.

Bonus

Sponsors are able to remove the project support message from all my CLI projects, as well as access other additional perks.

Author

Chris Johnson - defaced.dev - @defaced.dev (Bluesky)