Capture audio and video in HTML5

Sam Dutton

Introduction

Audio/Video capture has been the "Holy Grail" of web development for a long time. For many years we've had to rely on browser plugins (Flash or Silverlight) to get the job done. Come on!

HTML5 to the rescue. It might not be apparent, but the rise of HTML5 has brought a surge of access to device hardware. Geolocation (GPS), the Orientation API (accelerometer), WebGL (GPU), and the Web Audio API (audio hardware) are perfect examples. These features are ridiculously powerful, exposing high level JavaScript APIs that sit on top of the system's underlying hardware capabilities.

This tutorial introduces a new API, GetUserMedia, which allows web apps to access a user's camera and microphone.

The road to getUserMedia()

If you're not aware of its history, the way we arrived at the getUserMedia() API is an interesting tale.

Several variants of "Media Capture APIs" have evolved over the past few years. Many folks recognized the need to be able to access native devices on the web, but that led everyone and their mom to put together a new spec. Things got so messy that the W3C finally decided to form a working group. Their sole purpose? Make sense of the madness! The Device APIs Policy (DAP) Working Group has been tasked to consolidate + standardize the plethora of proposals.

I'll try to summarize what happened in 2011…

Round 1: HTML Media Capture

HTML Media Capture was the DAP's first go at standardizing media capture on the web. It works by overloading the <input type="file"> and adding new values for the accept parameter.

If you wanted to let users take a snapshot of themselves with the webcam, that's possible with capture=camera:

<input type="file" accept="image/*;capture=camera">

Recording a video or audio is similar:

<input type="file" accept="video/*;capture=camcorder">
<input type="file" accept="audio/*;capture=microphone">

Kinda nice right? I particularly like that it reuses a file input. Semantically, it makes a lot of sense. Where this particular "API" falls short is the ability to do realtime effects (e.g. render live webcam data to a <canvas> and apply WebGL filters). HTML Media Capture only allows you to record a media file or take a snapshot in time.

Support:

  • Android 3.0 browser - one of the first implementations. Check out this video to see it in action.
  • Chrome for Android (0.16)
  • Firefox Mobile 10.0
  • iOS6 Safari and Chrome (partial support)

Round 2: device element

Many thought HTML Media Capture was too limiting, so a new spec emerged that supported any type of (future) device. Not surprisingly, the design called for a new element, the <device> element, which became the predecessor to getUserMedia().

Opera was among the first browsers to create initial implementations of video capture based on the <device> element. Soon after (the same day to be precise), the WhatWG decided to scrap the <device> tag in favor of another up and comer, this time a JavaScript API called navigator.getUserMedia(). A week later, Opera put out new builds that included support for the updated getUserMedia() spec. Later that year, Microsoft joined the party by releasing a Lab for IE9 supporting the new spec.

Here's what <device> would have looked like:

<device type="media" onchange="update(this.data)"></device>
<video autoplay></video>
<script>
  function update(stream) {
    document.querySelector('video').src = stream.url;
  }
</script>

Support:

Unfortunately, no released browser ever included <device>. One less API to worry about I guess :) <device> did have two great things going for it though: 1.) it was semantic, and 2.) it was easily extendible to support more than just audio/video devices.

Take a breath. This stuff moves fast!

Round 3: WebRTC

The <device> element eventually went the way of the Dodo.

The pace to find a suitable capture API accelerated thanks to the larger WebRTC (Web Real Time Communications) effort. That spec is overseen by the W3C WebRTC Working Group. Google, Opera, Mozilla, and a few others have implementations.

getUserMedia() is related to WebRTC because it's the gateway into that set of APIs. It provides the means to access the user's local camera/microphone stream.

Support:

getUserMedia() has been supported since Chrome 21, Opera 18, and Firefox 17.

Getting started

With navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia(), we can finally tap into webcam and microphone input without a plugin. Camera access is now a call away, not an install away. It's baked directly into the browser. Excited yet?

Feature detection

Feature detecting is a simple check for the existence of navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia:

if (navigator.mediaDevices?.getUserMedia) {
  // Good to go!
} else {
  alert("navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia() is not supported");
}

Gaining access to an input device

To use the webcam or microphone, we need to request permission. The first parameter to navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia() is an object specifying the details and requirements for each type of media you want to access. For example, if you want to access the webcam, the first parameter should be {video: true}. To use both the microphone and camera, pass {video: true, audio: true}:

<video autoplay></video>

<script>
  navigator.mediaDevices
    .getUserMedia({ video: true, audio: true })
    .then((localMediaStream) => {
      const video = document.querySelector("video");
      video.srcObject = localMediaStream;
    })
    .catch((error) => {
      console.log("Rejected!", error);
    });
</script>

OK. So what's going on here? Media capture is a perfect example of new HTML5 APIs working together. It works in conjunction with our other HTML5 buddies, <audio> and <video>. Notice that we're not setting a src attribute or including <source> elements on the <video> element. Instead of feeding the video a URL to a media file, we're setting srcObject to the LocalMediaStream object representing the webcam.

I'm also telling the <video> to autoplay, otherwise it would be frozen on the first frame. Adding controls also works as you'd expected.

Setting media constraints (resolution, height, width)

The first parameter to getUserMedia() can also be used to specify more requirements (or constraints) on the returned media stream. For example, instead of just indicating you want basic access to video (e.g. {video: true}), you can additionally require the stream to be HD:

const hdConstraints = {
  video: { width: { exact:  1280} , height: { exact: 720 } },
};

const stream = await navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia(hdConstraints);

const vgaConstraints = {
  video: { width: { exact:  640} , height: { exact: 360 } },
};

const stream = await navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia(hdConstraints);

For more configurations, see the constraints API.

Selecting a media source

The enumerateDevices() method of the MediaDevices interface requests a list of the available media input and output devices, such as microphones, cameras, headsets, and so forth. The returned Promise is resolved with an array of MediaDeviceInfo objects describing the devices.

In this example, the last microphone and camera that's found is selected as the media stream source:

if (!navigator.mediaDevices?.enumerateDevices) {
  console.log("enumerateDevices() not supported.");
} else {
  // List cameras and microphones.
  navigator.mediaDevices
    .enumerateDevices()
    .then((devices) => {
      let audioSource = null;
      let videoSource = null;

      devices.forEach((device) => {
        if (device.kind === "audioinput") {
          audioSource = device.deviceId;
        } else if (device.kind === "videoinput") {
          videoSource = device.deviceId;
        }
      });
      sourceSelected(audioSource, videoSource);
    })
    .catch((err) => {
      console.error(`${err.name}: ${err.message}`);
    });
}

async function sourceSelected(audioSource, videoSource) {
  const constraints = {
    audio: { deviceId: audioSource },
    video: { deviceId: videoSource },
  };
  const stream = await navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia(constraints);
}

Check out Sam Dutton's great demo of how to let users select the media source.

Security

Browsers show a permission dialog upon calling navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia(), which gives users the option to grant or deny access to their camera/mic. For example, here is Chrome's permission dialog:

Permission dialog in Chrome
Permission dialog in Chrome

Providing fallback

For users that don't have support for navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia(), one option is to fallback to an existing video file if the API isn't supported and/or the call fails for some reason:

if (!navigator.mediaDevices?.getUserMedia) {
  video.src = "fallbackvideo.webm";
} else {
  const stream = await navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({ video: true });
  video.srcObject = stream;
}