Corrupt video uploads when chunking MediaRecorder to Google Cloud platform - reactjs

Question

I currently am using react hook powered component to record my screen, and subsequently upload it to Google Cloud Storage. However, when it finishes, the file created inside Google Cloud appears to be corrupt.
This is the gist of the code within my React component, where useMediaRecorder is from here: https://github.com/wmik/use-media-recorder -
let {
error,
status,
mediaBlob,
stopRecording,
getMediaStream,
startRecording,
liveStream,
} = useMediaRecorder({
onCancelScreenShare: () => {
stopRecording();
},
onDataAvailable: (chunk) => {
// do the uploading here:
onChunk(chunk);
},
recordScreen: true,
blobOptions: { type: "video/webm;codecs=vp8,opus" },
mediaStreamConstraints: { audio: audioEnabled, video: true },
});
As data becomes available through this hook - it calls onChunk( chunk ) passing a binary Blob through to that method, to perform the upload, I tie in with this section of code to perform the upload:
const onChunk = (binaryData) => {
var formData = new FormData();
formData.append("data", binaryData);
let customerApi = new CustomerVideoApi();
customerApi.uploadRecording(
videoUUID,
formData,
(res) => {},
(err) => {}
);
};
customerApi.uploadRecording looks like this (using axios).
const uploadRecording = (uuid, data, fn, fnErr) => {
axios
.post(endpoint + "/stream/upload", data, {
headers: {
"Content-Type": "multipart/form-data",
},
})
.then(function (response) {
fn(response);
})
.catch(function (error) {
fnErr(error.response);
});
};
The HTTP request succeeds, and all is well with the world: the server side code to upload is based on laravel:
// this is inside the controller.
public function index( Request $request )
{
// Set file attributes.
$filepath = '/public/chunks/';
$file = $request->file('data');
$filename = $uuid . ".webm";
// streamupload
File::streamUpload($filepath, $filename, $file, true);
return response()->json(['uploaded' => true,'uuid'=>$uuid]);
}
// there's a service provider used to create a new macro on the File:: object, providing the facility for appropriate handling the stream:
public function boot()
{
File::macro('streamUpload', function($path, $fileName, $file, $overWrite = true) {
$resource = fopen($file->getRealPath(), 'r+');
$storageClient = new StorageClient([
'projectId' => 'myprjectid',
'keyFilePath' => '/my/path/to/servicejson.json',
]);
$bucket = $storageClient->bucket('mybucket');
$adapter = new GoogleStorageAdapter($storageClient, $bucket);
$filesystem = new Filesystem($adapter);
return $overWrite
? $filesystem->putStream($fileName, $resource)
: $filesystem->writeStream($fileName, $resource);
});
}
So to reiterate:
React app chunks out blobs,
server side determines if it should create or append in Google Cloud Storage
server side succeeds.
4) Video inside Google Cloud platform is corrupted.
However, the video file, inside the Google Cloud container is corrupted and won't play. I'm unsure exactly why it is corrupted, but my guesses so far:
Some sort of Dodgy Mime type problem.. - different browsers seem to handle the codec / filetype differently from the mediarecorder: e.g. Chrome seems to be x-matroska (.mkv?) - firefox different again.. Ideally I would have a container of .webm - notice how I set the file name server side, and it isn't coming from the client. Should it? I'm unsure how to force the MediaRecorder to be a specific mimeType - I thought the blobOptions option should do it, but changing the extension and mime type seems to have little to no impact on the corruption occurring.
Some sort of problem during upload where an HTTP request doesn't execute and finish in order - e.g.
1 onDataAvailable completes second
2 onDataAvailable completes first
3 onDataAvailable completes third
I've sort of ruled this out because I think the chunks should be small enough.
Some sort of problem with Google Cloud Storage APIs that I'm using, perhaps in the wrong way? Does the cloud platform support streaming, and does this library send the correct params to do so?
Some sort of problem with how I'm uploading - should the axios headers be multipart formdata, or something else?
This is the package I'm using for the Server side: https://github.com/Superbalist/flysystem-google-cloud-storage
Can anyone could shed any light on how to achieve this goal of streaming up into Google Cloud without the video from the mediarecorder being corrupted? Hopefully there's enough detail here in the question to help figure it out. The problem as illustrated isn't on getting the file as far as Google cloud, but rather the resulting file being unplayable in any video format.
Update
I've ordered my chunks client side now, and queued them properly before letting them reach the server. No difference to the output. As some have suggested - a single blob upload request works fine.
Tried using streamable config param (from reading source code it seems like chunks need to be a certain size before Google recognises them as a resumable upload
$filesystem = new Filesystem($adapter, [
'resumable'=>true
]);
Not sure how: https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/performing-resumable-uploads - is implemented within the libraries I'm using, (or within the Google Cloud APIs themselves if at all?). Do I need to implement that myself? Documentation is light on Google's part.

Answer 1

Short version:
The first thing you should do is buffer the whole video locally, and send a single payload to the server and to google drive. This will validate your code for a small video is actually correct. Once you can verify this you can move onto handling multi-chunk uploads.
Longer version:
For starters, you aren't passing the uuid to the request, it's being used:
const uploadRecording = (uuid, data, fn, fnErr) => {
axios
.post(endpoint + "/stream/upload", data, {
headers: {
"Content-Type": "multipart/form-data",
},
})
.then(function (response) {
fn(response);
})
.catch(function (error) {
fnErr(error.response);
});
};
Next, you can't trust how chunking will work, I think you verified this behavior with the out of order result of chunk logging. You need to assume on your server you will get chunks out of order and handle them correctly.
Each chunk you get on the server needs to put in the right place, you can't just "writeStream", you need to write to the explicit binary block. Specifically, on every request specify the byte range: Google docs:
curl -i -X PUT --data-binary #CHUNK_LOCATION \
-H "Content-Length: CHUNK_SIZE" \
-H "Content-Range: bytes CHUNK_FIRST_BYTE-CHUNK_LAST_BYTE/TOTAL_OBJECT_SIZE" \
"SESSION_URI"
CHUNK_LOCATION is the local path to the
chunk that you're currently uploading. CHUNK_SIZE is the number of
bytes you're uploading in the current request. For example, 524288. CHUNK_FIRST_BYTE is the
starting byte in the overall object that the chunk you're uploading
contains. CHUNK_LAST_BYTE is the ending byte in the
overall object that the chunk you're uploading contains.
TOTAL_OBJECT_SIZE is the total size of the
object you are uploading. SESSION_URI is the value returned in the
Location header when you initiated the resumable upload.

Answer 2

Try to eliminate as many variables as possible and pinpoint where exactly the file is getting corrupted.
Since you are using a React(JS) -> Laravel(PHP) -> GoogleCloud path,
first thing I would suggest is to test each step separately:
React -> Laravel - save the file on your server and check if its corrupted at this point
Laravel -> GoogleCloud - Load a file from the server filesystem and upload to cloud and see if it gets corrupted
I don't have experience with Google cloud, but I did something very similar with AWS and found that their video uploading service was extremely picky about the requests (including order of headers that were sent).
Try to compare the specs on the service you are using with your input, make the smallest possible thing that works and start adding variables until you get to the final state.
Also I don't see any kind of data ordering in your code.
If your chunks are close to each other, and with streaming it is highly possible then there is a chance that they will arrive in different order than originally sent. If you just append them to a file without any control of the sorting then the file will indeed get corrupted. Not sure if for webm that would cause just parts of the video to be broken or the entire thing to die.