Exporting a video in p5.js

I am creating a simple animation program in p5.js. When a user clicks the save button, I want to download a video of the animation.

I have an object called frames where each key is labelled frame_1, frame_2 and so on. The value associated with each key is an array of line segments that makes up that frame.

I am trying to think of an approach to take this data and create an mp4 video. p5.js has a built in save function that I thought might be helpful but it is not a full solution on its own. I could save each frame as an individual image and then somehow stitch those images together on the client side but I have yet to find a solution to this.

Any other approaches would be great as well. The only requirement is that it is done client side.

Solution

Since p5.js is built on the Canvas API, in modern browsers, you can use a MediaRecorder to do this job.

const btn = document.querySelector('button'),
  chunks = [];

function record() {
  chunks.length = 0;
  let stream = document.querySelector('canvas').captureStream(30),
    recorder = new MediaRecorder(stream);
  recorder.ondataavailable = e => {
    if (e.data.size) {
      chunks.push(e.data);
    }
  };
  recorder.onstop = exportVideo;
  btn.onclick = e => {
    recorder.stop();
    btn.textContent = 'start recording';
    btn.onclick = record;
  };
  recorder.start();
  btn.textContent = 'stop recording';
}

function exportVideo(e) {
  var blob = new Blob(chunks);
  var vid = document.createElement('video');
  vid.id = 'recorded'
  vid.controls = true;
  vid.src = URL.createObjectURL(blob);
  document.body.appendChild(vid);
  vid.play();
}
btn.onclick = record;

// taken from pr.js docs
var x, y;

function setup() {
  createCanvas(300, 200);
  // Starts in the middle
  x = width / 2;
  y = height;
}

function draw() {
  background(200);

  // Draw a circle
  stroke(50);
  fill(100);
  ellipse(x, y, 24, 24);

  // Jiggling randomly on the horizontal axis
  x = x + random(-1, 1);
  // Moving up at a constant speed
  y = y - 1;

  // Reset to the bottom
  if (y < 0) {
    y = height;
  }
}

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/p5.js/0.5.7/p5.min.js"></script>
<button>start recording</button><br>