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Video Editor for REDAXO 6

Edit videos right in the media pool: analyse, optimize for the web, trim, pick a poster and write subtitles – with ffmpeg, as jobs in the background. The counterpart to the Image Editor.

• Analysis – resolution, codecs, duration, bitrate, whether the video starts right away; plus a web readiness score with recommendations you can apply with one click
• Optimize – presets for the web (1080p, 720p, 480p, WebM), archive, instant playback, remove audio, normalize loudness; several versions in one step
• Trim – timeline with thumbnails, split, remove sections, drag edges; fast without re-encoding or frame-accurate
• Poster – pick a still frame down to the exact frame
• Subtitles and chapters – editor with live preview, import of VTT and SRT, trimmed along automatically
• Result as a new, linked version or in place of the original – where it is used stays intact
• Background jobs with progress, cancel and retry; only one at a time
• Permissions in three levels: view, edit, replace the original

This rewrite for REDAXO 6 takes ideas from the ffmpeg addon for REDAXO 5. The screenshots show the German backend.

Installation

composer require friendsofredaxo/video_editor:1.x-dev
php bin/console migrate

Server requirements:

• ffmpeg and ffprobe (4.4 or newer) – looked up in PATH and the usual folders (/usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, /opt/homebrew/bin …)
• PHP for the command line, so jobs can run in the background (exec allowed). Without it the video editor processes the job after the response has been sent; in addition the cronjob video_editor_work picks up anything left over.

If the programs live elsewhere, set them as environment variables (e.g. in .env) or in the addon configuration:

Environment variable	Configuration	Meaning
FFMPEG_BIN	ffmpeg_path	path to ffmpeg
FFPROBE_BIN	ffprobe_path	path to ffprobe
PHP_CLI	php_cli	PHP for the command line (under PHP-FPM it is otherwise looked up next to the FPM binary)
–	timeout	maximum duration of a job in seconds (default 3600)

Analysis

The panel appears in the detail view of every video in the media pool (MP4, M4V, MOV, WebM, MKV, OGV, AVI). It shows a preview and the key facts and rates how well the video suits the web – from 0 to 100. Points are deducted for codecs browsers don't (H.265) or hardly play, oversized resolutions, high bitrates, videos that only start once fully loaded, and unsuitable formats. Every hint comes with a matching preset.

Optimize

Preset	Result
Web 1080p	H.264/AAC, at most 1080 pixels high – fits almost everything
Web 720p	H.264/AAC, at most 720 pixels high – for content videos
Web 480p	H.264/AAC, at most 480 pixels high – for phones and slow connections
Archive	H.264 in high quality, resolution unchanged
WebM (VP9)	VP9/Opus, at most 1080p – additional, often smaller version
Instant playback	without re-encoding: index moved to the start (faststart)
Remove audio	without re-encoding – e.g. for background videos
Normalize loudness	audio to −16 LUFS, picture unchanged

Videos are never scaled up beyond the original resolution. The result is added as a new version in the media pool and linked to the original – or it replaces the original if the format stays the same.

Several presets can be ticked together, e.g. 480p, 720p and 1080p: each becomes its own job, they run one after another. Replacing the original only works with a single preset. On the website the browser then picks the matching version by screen width (see For developers).

Trim

Set the playhead, split, click a section and remove it – or drag its edges. Play result skips the removed parts, the new length is shown below.

Key	Action
Space	play / pause
← →	one frame back / forward (with ⇧ one second)
Home / End	to the start / end
S	split at the playhead
I / O	move start / end of the selected section here
Del	remove section
⌘Z / Ctrl+Z	undo

Two ways to cut:

• Exact – frame-accurate; the video is re-encoded (H.264/AAC, VP9/Opus for WebM)
• Fast – without re-encoding, done instantly and without quality loss. A section can only start at a keyframe, though. The editor shows the keyframes on the timeline and marks in yellow what comes along as a result; if nothing would be removed that way, it recommends “Exact”.

Subtitles are trimmed along: entries in removed parts are dropped, partly removed ones shortened, everything after moves forward. A new version gets its own subtitle files; if the cut replaces the original, its files are adjusted.

Poster

Find the spot, hit it exactly with “±1 frame”, take it: the still lands as a JPEG in the media pool, in the same category, linked to the video. A new poster replaces the file of the previous one – wherever it is used, the new one shows up right away.

Subtitles and chapters

Any number of tracks per video – subtitles, captions for the deaf and hard of hearing (with sounds) and chapters, per language. The editor shows every change in the video right away:

• Entry at playhead (key N) – starts at the current position, ends after two seconds or before the next one
• set start and end to the playhead with a button, or type times as 1:05.250 or 65.25
• the current entry is highlighted, ▶ plays from its start
• Shift all by a few seconds – e.g. when a file doesn't match the cut
• Load file – WebVTT or SubRip (SRT), also in UTF-16 or Windows-1252

Tracks are saved as WebVTT in the media pool (video-de.vtt, video-en-cc.vtt, video-de-chapters.vtt), linked to the video. Saving and loading sanitizes: only allowed WebVTT tags (<b>, <i>, <u>, <v speaker>, <lang>, <c>, <ruby>), no STYLE/REGION blocks, no HTML. For the website the video editor delivers tracks as text/vtt – many web servers don't know the extension and send text/plain, which browsers reject.

Jobs

Optimizing and trimming run as jobs: the video editor starts php bin/console video:work in the background, the page shows the progress. Only one job runs at a time (lock file) so the server isn't overloaded. Stuck jobs (e.g. after a crash) are released, finished ones deleted after 30 days.

php bin/console video:work              # process waiting jobs (at most 55 minutes)
php bin/console video:work --seconds=60

The cronjob video_editor_work (every minute) catches up on anything left over – useful when exec is disabled. REDAXO 6 cronjobs only run when the system cron triggers them every minute:

# crontab -e (adjust the paths to PHP and the project)
* * * * * /usr/bin/php /path/to/project/bin/console cronjob:run > /dev/null 2>&1

php bin/console cronjob:run video_editor_work runs it right away, regardless of its schedule.

The media list shows open jobs too: a notice at the top (“one job running (71 %), 2 waiting”) and the state at the video – both update until everything is done.

Also without the backend, e.g. when setting up a website or for many videos at once:

php bin/console video:optimize film.mp4 web480,web720,web1080,webm   # create jobs (--run: process them right here)
php bin/console video:poster film.mp4 4.6                            # still at 4.6 s as poster
php bin/console video:subtitles film.mp4 film-en.srt --lang=en       # take over subtitles (--role, --label)

Permissions

Who	May
anyone with access to the media category	view preview, analysis, jobs and versions
video_editor[]	optimize (as a new version), trim, pick a poster, edit subtitles, cancel and retry jobs
additionally video_editor[replace] (options)	replace the original with the result
admins	everything

The media category permission always applies: even with video_editor[] a video in a foreign category stays locked. Checks happen on the server; the interface only hides what isn't allowed.

For developers

A complete <video> with poster, web versions and subtitles:

use FriendsOfRedaxo\VideoEditor\VideoEditor;

echo VideoEditor::html('film.mov', ['label' => 'Our film', 'captions' => true]);  // subtitles in the page language on
echo VideoEditor::html('loop.mp4', ['background' => true]);                       // muted, looping, no controls

Options: background, captions (true or a language code), poster (another file name or false), preload (metadata, none, auto), label, class.

The building blocks:

$poster = VideoEditor::poster('film.mov');          // Media|null – most recently picked poster
foreach (VideoEditor::sources('film.mov') as $s) {  // in checking order, with a media query for small versions
    echo '<source src="' . $s['url'] . '" type="' . $s['type'] . '"' . ($s['media'] ? ' media="' . $s['media'] . '"' : '') . '>';
}
VideoEditor::sources('film.mov', small: true);      // without 1080p and WebM, e.g. for background videos
VideoEditor::tracks('film.mov');                    // subtitles/chapters: file, url (text/vtt), lang, kind, label
VideoEditor::editUrl('film.mov');                   // edit in the media pool – null without permission

The order of sources(): 480p with (max-width: 640px), 720p with (max-width: 1280px), then WebM, then the largest MP4 version – without an MP4 version the original. The browser takes the first matching source, so a phone loads the small file.

To use the video editor only when it is installed, check class_exists(\FriendsOfRedaxo\VideoEditor\VideoEditor::class) first.

fluid

fluid doesn't need the video editor but uses it when present: the “Video” block shows the poster picked here when no preview image is set, delivers the web versions and takes over the subtitles (including the “text of the video” transcript) when none are set in the block; the hero background video takes the smaller version, and the media field gets a “Edit video” button for videos.

Technology

• ffmpeg exclusively with argument lists via proc_open – no shell, all input validated
• progress via -progress; cancelling stops ffmpeg (SIGTERM first, then SIGKILL)
• the editor loads the video through its own endpoint with range requests, so the browser can seek even when the web server delivers /media without range support
• dialogs and colours of the core, light and dark; no inline styles or handlers (backend Content Security Policy)

Tests

The unit tests cover reading, sanitizing and remapping subtitles. The integration tests check the permissions (view, edit, replace, foreign category). They need a REDAXO installation with a database and ffmpeg, create their own test data (everything named “ve-test”, short videos generated by ffmpeg) and clean up afterwards:

REDAXO_BOOTSTRAP=/path/to/redaxo/.tools/bootstrap.php vendor/bin/phpunit -c /path/to/video_editor/phpunit.dist.xml

Author

Thomas Skerbis (skerbis) for Friends Of REDAXO

Sample video in the screenshots: kitten from Pixabay.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.