Remotion: Making Videos Programmatically with React

I’m sipping my second cup of coffee, and I can feel that familiar buzz that makes me want to dive deep into code. Today, I want to talk about something that feels like a perfect intersection of web development and video creation – Remotion.

What is Remotion?

Remotion is a library that lets you create videos programmatically using React. That’s right – you write your video content in JSX, and it renders out to a video file. The idea isn’t new, but what makes Remotion interesting is how it leverages the familiarity of React components to make video production more accessible.

The Architecture

Let me start by showing you some basic code structure. Here’s how a simple Remotion component looks:

import { Video, Img, Text } from 'remotion';

export const MyVideo = () => {
  return (
    <Video width={1920} height={1080}>
      <Img src="https://example.com/image.jpg" />
      <Text text="Hello World" />
    </Video>
  );
};

This is where things get intriguing. Instead of traditional video editing tools, Remotion treats your video as a React component tree. Components like Video, Img, and Text are built specifically for this purpose.

TypeScript’s Role in the Design

I’ve been diving into TypeScript type gymnastics lately, and I’m genuinely fascinated by how Remotion handles types. The library uses complex generic types to ensure that you can’t accidentally pass invalid props to components. Here’s a snippet of what that might look like:

type VideoProps = {
  width: number;
  height: number;
  children: React.ReactNode;
};

const Video: React.FC<VideoProps> = ({ width, height, children }) => {
  // Implementation details...
};

The type system ensures that when you’re building your video components, everything has the right shape. This is particularly important in video creation where timing and positioning matter.

The Developer Experience

What I appreciate most about Remotion’s approach is how it treats video editing like coding. You get all the benefits of React’s component composition, lifecycle management, and state handling – but for videos.

Here’s a more complex example showing how you might animate something:

import { useCurrentFrame } from 'remotion';

export const AnimatedText = () => {
  const frame = useCurrentFrame();
  const opacity = Math.min(1, frame / 30);
  
  return (
    <Text 
      text="Animated Text"
      style={{ opacity }}
    />
  );
};

This feels like a natural extension of React’s ecosystem. If you’re comfortable with React hooks, you’re already halfway there.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Familiar React concepts make it approachable
• TypeScript support is strong and well-thought-out
• Can leverage existing React component libraries
• Great for generating personalized videos at scale
• No need to learn video editing software

Cons:

• Learning curve still exists (not just React)
• Performance can be tricky with complex animations
• Limited to what the library supports out of the box
• Debugging video output requires different tools

What I Learned

Working through Remotion’s codebase, I’ve learned that creating a good developer experience for video creation isn’t trivial. The challenge is balancing simplicity with power – you want to make it easy to create basic videos while still allowing for complex effects.

One thing that surprised me was how much attention they give to performance. They’ve built in optimizations like:

• Frame-by-frame rendering
• Efficient component diffing
• Asset management systems

Potential Improvements

I’m curious about a few areas where I think Remotion could grow:

1. Better integration with existing animation libraries like Framer Motion or GSAP
2. More comprehensive documentation for edge cases
3. Improved error handling when video rendering fails
4. Better support for real-time preview modes

Use Cases That Excite Me

I can imagine several scenarios where this would be useful:

• Creating personalized marketing videos for different customers
• Generating educational content with consistent branding
• Automating social media video creation
• Building dynamic presentations

My Take

Remotion represents an interesting approach to bridging web development and video production. It’s not perfect – there are still gaps in functionality and documentation that need attention. But the core concept is solid, and it shows how we can apply modern web development principles to traditional creative workflows.

What I find most compelling is that it treats video creation as a programming problem rather than a design problem. Instead of learning After Effects or Premiere Pro, you’re solving problems using React’s familiar patterns.

I’m still getting my bearings with Remotion, and I know there are parts of the API I haven’t explored yet. But I’m excited about what this kind of approach could mean for creators who want to leverage code in their creative processes.

I’ve got a few more ideas to explore with this library, but I’ll save those for next time. For now, I’m going to enjoy my second cup and see if I can get this video rendering working on my machine.

The best part about projects like Remotion is that they push us to think differently about what we build. What do you think? Have you tried any tools that blend code and creative workflows?

Coffee count: 2 (Second coffee: The caffeine is flowing, but I’m still trying to figure out if I should be using const or let in my video components)