openmaic/OpenMAIC/render-service/README.md

@openmaic/render-service

Isolated MP4 render service for OpenMAIC's classroom video export (issue #866).

The main app compiles a classroom to a self-contained Hyperframes project ZIP (index.html + assets/ + vendored GSAP) entirely in the browser. This service takes that ZIP and renders it to an MP4 with @hyperframes/producer, which drives headless Chromium (frame capture) + FFmpeg (encode). It runs in its own Node 22 container because the producer needs Node ≥ 22, Chromium, and FFmpeg — none of which belong in the Next.js runtime.

It is an opt-in capability: when the app has no RENDER_SERVICE_URL configured, in-app export degrades to downloading the project ZIP for local CLI rendering. Nothing here is required for the app to run.

HTTP API

Rendering is asynchronous (a 10-minute video can take tens of minutes): submit, poll, then download. Job ids are opaque.

Method + path	Purpose
POST /render	multipart: project (the ZIP) + fps, quality, format fields → 202 { jobId }
GET /render/:jobId	status/progress plus actual capture, worker, profile, and runtime metrics
GET /render/:jobId/download	stream the MP4 (or 302 to a presigned URL) once succeeded
DELETE /render/:jobId	cancel a queued/running job
GET /health	selected resource profile and observed producer/runtime versions

status is one of queued | running | succeeded | failed | cancelled; progress is 0..1.

Environment

Var	Default	Meaning
PORT	9000	Listen port.
RENDER_RESOURCE_PROFILE	standard	standard requires BeginFrame and 10 GiB; low-memory requires screenshot capture and 4 GiB. Both fix one producer worker, one render, and one extraction.
RENDER_MAX_CONCURRENCY	profile: 1	Must match the selected profile. Renders beyond the single execution slot queue FIFO.
RENDER_MAX_CONCURRENT_EXTRACTIONS	profile: 1	Must match the selected profile; bounds archive expansion to one 512 MiB expanded archive at a time.
RENDER_MAX_JOBS_PER_USER	1	Active jobs allowed per client identity (0 disables the guard — see note below).
RENDER_MAX_QUEUE	20	Max jobs in the system (reserved+queued+running) before new submits get 429.
RENDER_JOB_TTL_MS	1800000	How long finished jobs + artifacts live before cleanup.
RENDER_JOB_DEADLINE_MS	2700000	Hard per-job wall-clock deadline; overruns are aborted and marked failed.
RENDER_MAX_UPLOAD_BYTES	314572800	Max compressed archive size accepted (300 MB); enforced on real bytes, before buffering.
RENDER_MAX_ENTRIES	5000	Max entries allowed in the archive.
RENDER_MAX_ENTRY_BYTES	209715200	Max expanded size of any single entry (200 MB).
RENDER_MAX_EXPANDED_BYTES	536870912	Max total expanded size across all entries (512 MB).
RENDER_MAX_COMPRESSION_RATIO	200	Max expanded:compressed ratio per entry (ZIP-bomb guard).
RENDER_EGRESS_LOCKDOWN	true	Install the iptables egress lockdown at startup (needs root + CAP_NET_ADMIN); fails closed — the container exits if the rules can't be applied. Set false to run unisolated.
PRODUCER_TMP_PROJECT_DIR	/tmp/openmaic-renders	Scratch dir for unzipped projects + outputs.
PRODUCER_BROWSER_GPU_MODE	profile-controlled	Both profiles use the software/SwiftShader selector; standard keeps BeginFrame eligible with PRODUCER_FORCE_SCREENSHOT=false, while low-memory forces screenshot capture. This is not a host GPU requirement. Do not override it directly.
PRODUCER_LOW_MEMORY_MODE	profile-controlled	Explicitly false for standard and true for low-memory; cgroup heuristics cannot silently switch the selected profile.
PRODUCER_MAX_WORKERS	profile: 1	Explicit for both supported profiles so producer auto-sizing cannot raise the worker count.
PRODUCER_ENABLE_BROWSER_POOL	profile: false	Disabled because both supported profiles use one worker; no additional Chromium instances are admitted.
PRODUCER_HEADLESS_SHELL_PATH	/usr/bin/chromium-headless-shell (container)	Chromium headless shell executable used by producer's beginFrame resolver. Regular Chromium is not equivalent: it may resolve as beginFrame-capable and then reject HeadlessExperimental.beginFrame, causing a screenshot fallback.
RENDER_REQUIRE_BEGINFRAME	profile-controlled	standard fails the job when producer reports anything except exactly beginframe; low-memory expects screenshot and does not require BeginFrame.
PRODUCER_PUPPETEER_PROTOCOL_TIMEOUT_MS	900000 (set in Compose)	CDP timeout headroom for long frame ranges. The producer default of 300 seconds caused long jobs to fall back from four workers to two.
HF_STATIC_DEDUP	false (set in Compose)	Temporary OpenMAIC-export workaround: these long slide compositions currently exhaust producer's 15-second verification budget and disable dedup anyway. Skipping the doomed verification removes the fixed startup cost without changing frames.
RENDER_HOME	/app	Writable home used after the entrypoint drops privileges. Producer font caches live under $RENDER_HOME/.cache, never /root/.cache.
PUPPETEER_EXECUTABLE_PATH	/usr/bin/chromium-headless-shell	System Chromium headless shell (set in the image).

Client identity for the per-user guard is taken from the x-openmaic-client header, which the app's proxy sets. A client-supplied userId form field is ignored. The app derives that header from x-forwarded-for/x-real-ip only when the operator sets TRUST_PROXY_HEADERS=true (and a real reverse proxy overwrites those headers); otherwise all callers share one direct identity, so the default directly-exposed Compose topology can't be gamed by spoofing forwarding headers.

Per-user guard vs. shared identity. When identity can't be trusted (no reverse proxy → everyone is direct), a RENDER_MAX_JOBS_PER_USER of 1 would throttle the whole deployment to one render at a time. The default Compose therefore sets RENDER_MAX_JOBS_PER_USER=0 (guard off) and relies on RENDER_MAX_CONCURRENCY + RENDER_MAX_QUEUE. Enable the per-user guard only behind a trusted proxy that supplies a real per-user identity.

Security / isolation

The uploaded archive is untrusted, so extraction is bounded before any bytes are decompressed (entry count, per-entry and total expanded size, and compression ratio — see the limits above), guarding against ZIP bombs. Extraction runs on fflate's worker (off the event loop) and is concurrency-capped so admitted jobs can't stack the per-archive RAM ceiling.

The composition HTML is then executed in headless Chromium. Two boundaries keep that untrusted page contained:

• No inbound-to-app bridge. The container's entrypoint installs an iptables egress lockdown (drop all outbound except loopback + replies on app-initiated connections), so Chromium can't open connections back to the app — even though they share the Compose network so the app can reach the service. This needs the container to run with CAP_NET_ADMIN (cap_add: [NET_ADMIN], already set in the Compose file). With RENDER_EGRESS_LOCKDOWN=true (the default) the entrypoint fails closed: if the rules can't be applied (missing capability, backend mismatch) the container exits non-zero rather than start an unisolated service the app would still advertise as healthy. An operator who knowingly accepts an unisolated standalone setup opts out with RENDER_EGRESS_LOCKDOWN=false. scripts/egress-smoke.sh <image> asserts the boundary end-to-end (lockdown active, loopback works, a new outbound connection is blocked).
• No internet. In Compose the render network is internal: true (no host or internet gateway). The export ZIP bundles every asset (and GSAP) at build time, so the render needs no outbound at all.

When running standalone, place the service on an isolated network yourself (and keep the egress lockdown on, or accept the risk with the toggle) — it needs no outbound access.

Run

Docker (recommended)

The root docker-compose.yml wires this service under the video-export profile and points the app at it:

docker compose --profile video-export up --build

Standalone (development)

Requires Node 22, Chromium's old headless shell, and FFmpeg on PATH. The standard profile checks for 10 GiB of available host/cgroup memory before listening:

cd render-service
npm install
PUPPETEER_EXECUTABLE_PATH=$(which chromium-headless-shell) \
PRODUCER_HEADLESS_SHELL_PATH=$(which chromium-headless-shell) \
RENDER_RESOURCE_PROFILE=standard \
PRODUCER_PUPPETEER_PROTOCOL_TIMEOUT_MS=900000 \
HF_STATIC_DEDUP=false \
npm start

Resource profiles

The default standard CPU profile is the intended 1080p / 30 fps / standard quality path: BeginFrame is required, producer workers are fixed at one, and the service admits one render plus one archive extraction at a time. It requires at least 10 GiB of host/cgroup memory. A missing headless shell, insufficient memory, or a producer result whose actual mode is screenshot, mixed, or unknown fails clearly rather than completing under a different capture path. No host GPU is required or requested; Chromium uses its software/SwiftShader selector in the standard profile.

Use the safe low-memory profile only when BeginFrame latency is less important than a smaller memory ceiling. It fixes screenshot capture, one worker, one render, and one extraction, and requires at least 4 GiB:

RENDER_RESOURCE_PROFILE=low-memory \
RENDER_SERVICE_MEMORY_LIMIT=4g \
docker compose --profile video-export up --build

Both /health and GET /render/:jobId make the selection observable. Health reports the requested profile, capture mode, worker/concurrency bounds, minimum memory, and observed Node, producer, Chromium, and FFmpeg versions. A completed or capture-mode-rejected job reports requested versus actual capture mode and worker count with the same version record.

The previous fixed 720p short-sample comparison that motivated these profiles was:

Capture path	Workers	Result
screenshot	1	28.7 s baseline
BeginFrame	1	16.3 s, about 43% faster
BeginFrame	2	only a small improvement beyond one worker
BeginFrame	4	no improvement on four vCPU; higher resource pressure

These measurements justify the one-worker standard, not a general latency SLA. The full 1080p sample took 696.9 s with one worker, with capture about 75.5% and encode about 20.6% of runtime. Four-worker 1080p/4K and multi-job profiles remain unsupported until their combined correctness and memory bounds are validated.

Output parity must be verified separately for each validated profile before claiming parity acceptance.

Scalability

The service is built with three swap points so it can move from a single OSS host to a horizontally-scaled demo deployment without changing the HTTP contract or the app:

• RenderExecutor (src/render-executor.ts) — InProcessExecutor adapts the current HyperFrames producer to stable progress, cancellation, deadline, failure, and performance types. A bounded local or remote executor can replace it without changing RenderCoordinator or the routes.
• JobStore (src/job-store.ts) — Part A ships InMemoryJobStore. A RedisJobStore implementing the same interface lets any replica serve poll / download requests.
• ArtifactStore (src/artifact-store.ts) — Part A ships LocalDiskArtifactStore (streams through the app proxy). An S3ArtifactStore whose locate returns a presigned URL makes the download route 302 the browser straight to object storage, bypassing the proxy.

RenderCoordinator owns admission, queueing, job state, artifact registration, and cleanup while depending only on those three interfaces.

Chunked distributed rendering (@hyperframes/producer/distributed) to cut single-job latency is a further, separate follow-up.