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

• Getting Started
  • Installation
  • Usage
  • Options
• Examples
  • Page Export
  • Custom Timeline
  • Export Element
  • Twitter Export
  • Coloured Background
  • Lossless Export
• FAQ
• Sponsors
  • Bonus
• Author

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

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.

Options

Options:
      --help            Show help                                                                    [boolean]
      --version         Show version number                                                          [boolean]
  -s, --script          [browser] Custom script                                                       [string]
  -S, --selector        [browser] DOM selector                                  [string] [default: "document"]
  -t, --timeline        [browser] GSAP timeline object                              [string] [default: "gsap"]
  -z, --scale           [browser] Scale factor                                           [number] [default: 1]
  -V, --viewport        [browser] Viewport size                                [string] [default: "1920x1080"]
  -i, --info            [browser] Info only
      --frame-start     [browser] Start frame
      --frame-end       [browser] End frame
  -p, --color           [video] Auto padding color                                  [string] [default: "auto"]
  -c, --codec           [video] Codec                                            [string] [default: "libx264"]
  -e, --input-options   [video] FFmpeg input options                                                  [string]
  -E, --output-options  [video] FFmpeg output options         [string] [default: ""-pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 18""]
  -o, --output          [video] Filename                                       [string] [default: "video.mp4"]
  -f, --fps             [video] Framerate                                               [number] [default: 60]
  -v, --resolution      [video] Output resolution                                   [string] [default: "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

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

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 

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
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
https://codepen.io/cassie-codes/pen/mNWxpL -S svg -v 1080x1080 -z 2

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
https://codepen.io/cassie-codes/pen/VwZBjRq -S svg -z 2 -v 1080x1080

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 double quoted string of FFmpeg output arguments to allow a lot of flexability over the final render.

# 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"'

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 you're not going to have any issues.

If you're triggering animations that are not locked to the timeline then this might not be the right tool for the job.

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