CodecMedia (Work in Progress)

Raw port from Java (incomplete)

CodecMedia is a Node.js port of the original CodecMedia Java engine for media probing, validation, metadata sidecar persistence, audio extraction, playback workflow simulation, and conversion routing.

Project Status (Important)

• Current npm release: 1.1.5
• This npm package is still in active development and not all media files/formats are supported yet.
• WebM, WAV, and MP4 support are currently under testing and may change.
• Conversion/transcoding is not fully supported yet (current routes are limited and mostly placeholder behavior).
• The Node.js implementation is an incomplete port from the Java version.

Approaches

• Zero-Dependency
• Self-Contained
• Multi-Platform

Repository Layout

• src/ contains the Node.js implementation used by this npm package.
• main/java/ refers to the original Java source layout in the upstream CodecMedia project lineage (not part of this npm package repository).
• npm publishing is intentionally limited to the Node.js package files (src, README.md, LICENSE).

Features (Current / Experimental)

• Media engine facade via createDefault()
• Probing support for:
  • MP3 (available for real-file testing, experimental)
  • OGG/Vorbis/Opus (not ready yet, in progress)
  • WAV (RIFF/RIFX/RF64, robust chunk scanning) (available for real-file testing, experimental)
  • AIFF/AIF/AIFC (COMM-based parsing) (not ready yet, in progress)
  • M4A (MP4 audio profile) (not ready yet, in progress)
  • FLAC (STREAMINFO parsing) (not ready yet, in progress)
  • PNG (available for real-file testing, experimental)
  • JPEG (not ready yet, in progress)
  • WebP (not ready yet, in progress)
  • BMP (not ready yet, in progress)
  • TIFF (not ready yet, in progress)
  • HEIC/HEIF/AVIF (basic BMFF parsing) (not ready yet, in progress)
  • MOV (QuickTime container parsing) (not ready yet, in progress)
  • MP4 (basic ISO BMFF parsing) (available for real-file testing, experimental)
  • WebM (available for real-file testing, experimental)
• Validation with size limits works; strict parser checks are partial (currently reliable for WebM and WAV, others still evolving)
• Metadata read/write with sidecar persistence (.codecmedia.properties) is available
• In-Node extraction workflow is available in limited mode (copy/same-format behavior, no real transcoding)
• Playback API is available for dry-run; desktop-open backend is optional and environment-dependent
• Conversion hub routing is implemented via DefaultConversionHub (same-format copy, wav <-> pcm stub, image-to-image via codec registry, unsupported routes throw explicit errors)

Optional External Adapters (Opt-In)

• Core default behavior is pure Node.js and does not execute external binaries.
• You can opt in to external adapters by passing options to createDefault(options).
• Example opt-in capabilities:
  • enableFfprobeEnhancement: true to enrich MOV/MP4/WebM probe output when ffprobe is available.
  • imageToImageTranscodeConverter to inject/override image converter implementation when you need custom behavior.

API Behavior Summary

• get(input): alias of probe(input) for convenience.
• probe(input): detects media/container characteristics and returns technical stream info for supported formats.
• readMetadata(input): returns derived probe metadata plus sidecar entries when present.
• writeMetadata(input, metadata): validates and writes metadata to a sidecar properties file next to the input.
• extractAudio(input, outputDir, options): validates audio input and writes extracted output into outputDir.
• convert(input, output, options): performs routed conversion behavior and enforces overwrite handling.
• play(input, options): supports dry-run playback and optional system default app launch.
• validate(input, options): validates existence, max size, and optional strict parser-level checks.

Notes and Limitations

• Current probing focuses on technical media info (mime/type/streams/basic tags).
• Probe routing performs a lightweight header-prefix sniff before full decode to reduce unnecessary full-file reads for clearly unsupported/unknown inputs.
• readMetadata uses sidecar metadata persistence; it is not a full embedded tag extractor (for example ID3 album art/APIC).
• Audio-to-audio conversion is not implemented yet for real transcode cases (for example mp3 -> ogg).
• The only temporary audio conversion path is a stub wav <-> pcm route and should be treated as non-final behavior.
• Same-extension conversion is passthrough copy (reencoded=false) via SameFormatCopyConverter.
• Image-to-image conversion is routed through ImageTranscodeConverter; PNG codec wiring (png -> png) is available in experimental mode.
• Unsupported routes (for example video -> audio, video -> video, audio -> image) intentionally throw explicit CodecMediaException messages.
• Rich MOV/MP4/WebM ffprobe enrichment is disabled by default and must be explicitly enabled.
• WebM and WAV parsing/probing should be considered experimental while testing is ongoing.
• For OpenAL workflows that require OGG from MP3 input, use an external transcoder first (for example ffmpeg), then play the produced OGG.

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• npm 9+

Install

npm install codecmedia

Quick Example

import { CodecMedia } from "codecmedia";

const engine = CodecMedia.createDefault({
  enableFfprobeEnhancement: false,
});

const input = "./media/sample.mp4";

const probe = engine.probe(input);
console.log("Probe:", probe);

const validation = engine.validate(input, { strict: true, maxBytes: 500 * 1024 * 1024 });
console.log("Validation:", validation);

const metadata = engine.readMetadata(input);
console.log("Metadata:", metadata);

engine.writeMetadata(input, {
  entries: {
    title: "Demo Title",
    artist: "CodecMedia",
  },
});

const playback = engine.play(input, { dryRun: true, allowExternalApp: false });
console.log("Playback:", playback);

Build & Test

npm test

PS G:\Projects\Code\Lib\CodecMedia\codecmedia-npm> npm run test

> [email protected] test
> node --test ./test/*.test.js

ℹ tests 159
ℹ suites 48
ℹ pass 159
ℹ fail 0
ℹ cancelled 0
ℹ skipped 0
ℹ todo 0
ℹ duration_ms 1875.1237

Conversion pipeline tests are available in test/convert.test.js and are included by the default Node test glob.

Run only conversion tests:

node --test ./test/convert.test.js

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

by TamKungZ_