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Contributing to Remotion

Issues and pull requests of all sorts are welcome!

For bigger projects, please coordinate with Jonny Burger (jonny@remotion.dev, Discord: @jonnyburger) to make sure your changes get merged.

Please note that since we charge for Remotion when companies are using it, this is a commercial project.
By sending pull requests, you agree that we can use your code changes in a commercial context.

Furthermore, also note that you cannot redistribute this project. Please see LICENSE.md for what's allowed and what's not.

This project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.

Setup​

Remotion uses Bun v1.3.0 as the package manager for development in this repository. The version must be at least 1.3.0.

curl -fsSL https://bun.com/install | bash -s "bun-v1.3.0"

Clone the Remotion repository:

sh
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/remotion-dev/remotion.git && cd remotion
note

The full Git history of Remotion is large. To save time and disk space, we recommend adding --depth=1 to only clone the most recent main branch.

Install all dependencies:

sh
bun i

Build the project initially:

sh
bun run build

Rebuild whenever a file changes:

sh
bun run watch

You can start making changes!

Coming from pnpm​

Before using Bun, we used pnpm as the package manager. If you are coming from pnpm, you need to wipe all node_modules folders first before you run bun i.

sh
bun run cleanall

Testing your changes​

You can start the Testbed using

sh
cd packages/example
bun run dev

You can render a test video using

sh
cd packages/example
bunx remotion render

You can run tests using

sh
bun run test

in either a subpackage to run tests for that package or in the root to run all tests.

Running the @remotion/player testbed​

You can test changes to @remotion/player by starting the Player testbed:

sh
cd packages/player-example
bun run dev

For information about testing Remotion components, please consult the Testing Remotion components page. Issues and pull requests of all sorts are welcome!

Running documentation​

You can run the Docusaurus server that powers our docs using:

sh
cd packages/docs
bun run start

Running the CLI​

You can test changes to the CLI by moving to packages/examples directory and using bunx to execute the CLI:

sh
cd packages/examples
# Example - Get available compositions
bunx remotion compositions
# Example - Render command
bunx remotion render ten-frame-tester --output ../../out/video.mp4

Testing Remotion Lambda​

In packages/example, there is a runlambda.sh script that will rebuild the code for the Lambda function, remove any deployed Lambda functions, deploy a new one and render a video.
You need to put you AWS credentials in a .env file of the packages/example directory.

sh
cd packages/example
sh ./runlambda.sh
note

This will delete any Lambda functions in your account!

Testing Remotion Cloud Run​

In packages/example, there is a runcloudrun.sh script that will rebuild the code for the Cloud Run function, remove any deployed Cloud Run services, deploy a new one and render a video.
You need to put you GCP credentials in a .env file of the packages/example directory.

sh
cd packages/example
sh ./runcloudrun.sh
note

This will delete any Cloud Run services in your account!

Troubleshooting​

If your bun run build throws errors, oftentimes it is because of caching issues. You can resolve many of these errors by running

ts
bun run clean

in the root directory. Make sure to beforehand kill any bun run watch commands, as those might regenerate files as you clean them!

Developing Rust parts​

To develop the Rust parts of Remotion, see here.

See also​