A BigBlueButton recording postscript to provide video download capability.

The assembled video includes:

• shared audio and webcams video
• presented slides with
  • whiteboard actions (text and drawings)
  • cursor movements
  • zooming
• screen sharing
• captions
• chapter marks for each slide & screensharing

Differences to bbb presentation:

• The cursor is rendered as a square box instead of a circle
• The cursor will grow in size when zoom is applied

IMPORTANT: The provided install-script assumes you run BigBlueButton v2.2 on Ubuntu 16.04 as described in the official documentation; i.e. bbb specific folders like the installation directory (/usr/local/bigbluebutton), data directory (/var/bigbluebutton) and log directory (/var/log/bigbluebutton) are hard coded into the scripts.

Tested with BigBlueButton v2.2.23.

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/tilmanmoser/bbb-video-download.git
cd bbb-video-download
chmod u+x install.sh
sudo ./install.sh

The installation script will

• install dependencies for images processing via apt
• download node v12 binaries for linux x64 (as BBB only provides node v12).
• install node_modules for bbb_video_download
• copy a post_publish script, so that downloadable videos are created automatically
• change the ownership of the installation directory and post script to bigbluebutton

IMPORTANT: Don't update node via apt, since BBB relies on node v8!

The downloadable video will be stored after processing at /var/bigbluebutton/published/presentation/<presentation_id>/video.mp4 and can be accessed in the browser at https://<your_bbb_server>/presentation/<presentationid>/video.mp4.

cd /opt/bbb-video-download
git pull origin master

Use bbb-record --rebuild <presentation_id> to reprocess a single presentation or bbb-record --rebuildall to reprocess all existing presentations.

Alternatively you can run bbb-video-download manually:

cd /opt/bbb-video-download
./node12/bin/node index.js -h
>usage: index.js [-h] [-v] -i INPUT -o OUTPUT [--slides-width SLIDES_WIDTH] [--webcams-width WEBCAMS_WIDTH] [--threads THREADS] [--filter-threads FILTER_THREADS]
>
>optional arguments:
>  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
>  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
>  -i INPUT, --input INPUT
>                        Path to published presentation
>  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
>                        Outputfile .mp4
>  --slides-width SLIDES_WIDTH
>                        Set width (int) of slide area (presentation and/or deskshare); default 1280
>  --webcams-width WEBCAMS_WIDTH
>                        Set width (int) of webcams area; default 640
>  --threads THREADS     
>                        Set # of threads (int) to be used by ffmpeg; default 1
>  --filter-threads FILTER_THREADS
>                        Set # of filter threads (int) to be used by ffmpeg; default 1

Example for a published presentation with internal meeting id 9a9b6536a10b10017f7e849d30a026809852d01f-1597816023148:

cd /opt/bbb-video-download
./node12/bin/node index.js -i /var/bigbluebutton/published/presentation/9a9b6536a10b10017f7e849d30a026809852d01f-1597816023148 -o your-video.mp4

Check /var/log/bigbluebutton/post_publish.log for errors.

MPEG4 is not a free format. You may need to obtain a license to use this script on your server.

Feel free to reuse my code for further enhancements. The assembled ffmpeg command that renders the video is logged in /var/log/bigbluebutton/post_publish.log.