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bbb-mp4

Easily integrate this app into your BigBlueButton server to automatically convert class recordings into MP4 videos.

How it works?

After a BigBlueButton class ends, recording process kicks in, which will process recording in three stages - archieve, process and publish. Once recording is published, /usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/post_publish/bbb_mp4.rb is executed.

In bbb_mp4.rb, we invoke bbb-mp4.sh with corresponding meeting_id to convert recording into mp4 video.

bbb-mp4.sh starts a docker process to launch Chrome browser with the BigBlueButton playback URL in a Virtual Screen Buffer, that plays the recording and FFmpeg will capture the screen in mp4 format. MP4 will be moved to /var/www/bigbluebutton-default/recording.

When you visit the default BBB playback url https://<your-bbb-fqdn>/playback/presentation/2.3/<meeting_id>, either of the following two cases happen:

  • MP4 video exists: A download button will appear at the bottom right.
  • MP4 video doesn't exist: A download button will not appear.

Hence, you can safely deploy this project on your existing BigBlueButton server.

  • Going forward, all your recordings would get converted into MP4 videos.
  • Older recordings will still be accessible as default BBB playback recording.

Requirement

  1. Install the Docker as per the instruction mentioned here https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/

Install

# Assuming you install bbb-mp4 project at /var/www/
# SSH to your BigBlueButton server and execute the following commands
cd /var/www
git clone https://github.com/manishkatyan/bbb-mp4.git
cd bbb-mp4

Edit .env to update the following parameters:

  1. BBB_DOMAIN_NAME: (Example - bbb.higheredlab.com)
  2. COPY_TO_LOCATION: location where converted MP4 videos should be kept. Leave it at the default value so that you can view MP4 video at https://<your-bbb-fqdn>/recording/<meeting_id>.mp4.
# Execute the following to install all required packages. 
./bbb-mp4-install.sh

bbb-mp4-install.sh will install the following packages In Docker :

  1. XVFB
  2. Google Chrome
  3. FFmpeg
  4. NodeJS
  5. Dependencies

During this installation, bbb-mp4-install.sh will also do the following:

  • create bbb_mp4.rb to invoke bbb-mp4.sh that will start automatic MP4 conversion after a class recording is published.
  • create a directory recording at /var/www/bigbluebutton-default to store converted MP4 videos that can be accessed via browser.
  • update the default index.html at /var/bigbluebutton/playback/presentation/2.3/index.html to provide download button.
# give bigbluebutton user sudo access
usermod -aG sudo bigbluebutton

# make sudo access passwordless
sudo visudo
# add the following line at the end of the file
bigbluebutton ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

You need to give user bigbluebutton sudo access, as detailed above, for bbb-mp4 to run correctly.

How to use it

No changes are required from your side to view MP4 videos created by bbb-mp4.

As we updated the default index.html, when you would visit the default playback url - https://<your-bbb-fqdn>/playback/presentation/2.3/<meeting_id> - you would see a download button

If you are using Greenlight or Moodle, you will continue to use the same way to view MP4 videos.

Uninstall

In case you want to restore the default playback.html, please follow the steps below:

mv /var/bigbluebutton/playback/presentation/2.3/index_default.html /var/bigbluebutton/playback/presentation/2.3/index.html
mv /usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/post_publish/bbb_mp4.rb /usr/local/bigbluebutton/core/scripts/post_publish/bbb_mp4.rb.old

With this, you would be able to restore default playback behavior and default post_poublish action.

BigBlueButton Tech Support

Are you facing difficulties with your BigBlueButton server?

Lean on our expertise to smoothly run your BigBlueButton server. We can:

  1. troubleshoot your BigBlueButton servers to improve audio and video performance,
  2. install additional features such as streaming, mp4 recordings and attendance, and
  3. provide managed BigBlueButton servers, starting at $12 per month

Click here to learn more

More on BigBlueButton

Check-out the following apps to further extend features of BBB.

bbb-jamboard

The default whiteboard of BigBlueButton has limited features including no eraser. Many teachers wish to have a more features-rich whiteboard that would help them better in conducting online classes.

With BBB-Jamboard, you can easily integrate Google Jamboard into your BigBlueButton server.

Jamboard is a digital interactive whiteboard developed by Google and can be used in stead of the default BugBlueButton whiteboard. Google Jamboard has the eraser feature that has often been requested by BigBlueButton users.

bbb-admin

Scripts for BigBlueButton admins including extracting IP of users joining, participants attendance, poll answers and many other analytics.

bbb-twilio

Integrate Twilio into BigBlueButton so that users can join a meeting with a dial-in number. You can get local numbers for almost all the countries.

bbb-optimize

Better audio quality, increase recording processing speed, dynamic video profile, pagination, fix 1007/1020 errors and use apply-config.sh to manage your customizations are some key techniques for you to optimize and smoothly run your BigBlueButton servers.

bbb-streaming

Livestream your BigBlueButton classes on Youtube or Facebook to thousands of your users.

bbb-recording-server

With this app, you can process BigBlueButton recordings on a separate server, called BBB Recording Server. Separation of recordings from BigBlueButton (client) improves performance as all server resources are dedicated towards conducting live classes.

100 Most Googled Questions on BigBlueButton

Everything you need to know about BigBlueButton including pricing, comparison with Zoom, Moodle integrations, scaling, and dozens of troubleshooting.

Inspired by

bbb-mp4 app builds on the ideas from several other projects, including: