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Code sharing

If you are using the player, a common desire is to share the code with your Remotion Studio and/or server-side rendering. With the correct setup, you can write the component once and use it for previewing, displaying and rendering.

note

Remotion and your React app use a different Webpack config. Therefore, if you want to override your Webpack configuration, you need to override both the Remotion one and the React app one.

Setup

Set up a React project with your preferred setup from the Official React docs. Popular choices are:

note

While you can still use Create React App, it is not being actively recommended by the React team anymore.

When your project is setup, add the necessary Remotion dependencies:

bash
npm i remotion @remotion/cli @remotion/player
bash
npm i remotion @remotion/cli @remotion/player

Afterwards, create a subfolder for Remotion within your project and add three files: An index file, a Root.tsx file for your list of compositions, and a file with your composition. It could look like this:

diff
└── src/
+ ├── remotion/
+ │ ├── index.ts
+ │ ├── MyComp.tsx
+ │ └── Root.tsx
└── app/
└── App.tsx
diff
└── src/
+ ├── remotion/
+ │ ├── index.ts
+ │ ├── MyComp.tsx
+ │ └── Root.tsx
└── app/
└── App.tsx

Your composition (remotion/MyComp.tsx in the example) could look for example like this:

tsx
export const MyComp: React.FC<{ text: string }> = ({ text }) => {
return <div>Hello {text}!</div>;
};
tsx
export const MyComp: React.FC<{ text: string }> = ({ text }) => {
return <div>Hello {text}!</div>;
};

Your list of videos (remotion/Root.tsx in the example) could look like this:

tsx
import { Composition } from "remotion";
import { MyComp } from "./MyComp";
 
export const MyVideo = () => {
return (
<>
<Composition
component={MyComp}
durationInFrames={120}
width={1920}
height={1080}
fps={30}
id="my-comp"
defaultProps={{ text: "World" }}
/>
</>
);
};
tsx
import { Composition } from "remotion";
import { MyComp } from "./MyComp";
 
export const MyVideo = () => {
return (
<>
<Composition
component={MyComp}
durationInFrames={120}
width={1920}
height={1080}
fps={30}
id="my-comp"
defaultProps={{ text: "World" }}
/>
</>
);
};

Your index file (remotion/index.ts in the example) could look like this:

tsx
import { registerRoot } from "remotion";
import { MyVideo } from "./Video";
 
registerRoot(MyVideo);
tsx
import { registerRoot } from "remotion";
import { MyVideo } from "./Video";
 
registerRoot(MyVideo);
tip

Don't move these statements together into one file, as you might break hot reloading.

Using the Remotion Studio

You can open the Remotion Studio using the npx remotion studio command:

bash
npx remotion studio src/remotion/index.ts
bash
npx remotion studio src/remotion/index.ts
note

Before v4.0, the command was npx remotion preview.

We recommend adding a new script into your package.json for easy access:

diff
"scripts": {
+ "video": "remotion studio src/remotion/index.ts"
}
diff
"scripts": {
+ "video": "remotion studio src/remotion/index.ts"
}

Adding <Player /> to your app

Anywhere in your app, import the <Player /> component and your Composition component.

tsx
import { Player } from "@remotion/player";
import { MyComp } from "./remotion/MyComp";
 
export const App: React.FC = () => {
return (
<Player
component={MyComp}
inputProps={{ text: "World" }}
durationInFrames={120}
compositionWidth={1920}
compositionHeight={1080}
fps={30}
style={{
width: 1280,
height: 720,
}}
controls
/>
);
};
tsx
import { Player } from "@remotion/player";
import { MyComp } from "./remotion/MyComp";
 
export const App: React.FC = () => {
return (
<Player
component={MyComp}
inputProps={{ text: "World" }}
durationInFrames={120}
compositionWidth={1920}
compositionHeight={1080}
fps={30}
style={{
width: 1280,
height: 720,
}}
controls
/>
);
};
note

Pass your React component directly to the component prop. Don't pass the list of compositions.

If everything worked, you can now run your webapp and preview your video.

Creating a bundle for server-side rendering

In any Node.JS context, you can call bundle() to bundle your video using Webpack and to server-side render the video. You need to add @remotion/bundler to your package.json for this.

server.tsx
ts
import path from "path";
import { bundle } from "@remotion/bundler";
 
const bundled = await bundle(
path.join(process.cwd(), "src", "remotion", "index.ts")
);
server.tsx
ts
import path from "path";
import { bundle } from "@remotion/bundler";
 
const bundled = await bundle(
path.join(process.cwd(), "src", "remotion", "index.ts")
);

See Server-side rendering for a full example.

tip

When using Lambda, you don't need this, you can use the CLI or deploySite() which will bundle the video for you.

See also