Reel Exporter

A small, self-hosted, Plex-style video player for grabbing full-quality screenshots and trimming clips from your media library.

Reel Exporter points at a read-only media share, shows your movies and shows in a compact sidebar, and plays anything in the browser through a lightweight preview transcode. Every capture is cut from the original file, never from the preview, and lands in an output folder named after the movie or show. No GPU, no database, no accounts. It runs on port 7727.

Features

• Plays everything. MKV, MP4, AVI, TS and friends with H.264, HEVC, AV1, 10-bit and HDR video and AC3, DTS, TrueHD or AAC audio all stream as an on-the-fly HLS preview (H.264 and AAC, up to 1080p). Seeking anywhere in a 60 GB remux starts within a couple of seconds.
• Frame-accurate screenshots as PNG, JPEG or WebP (with a quality slider for the lossy formats) at the source resolution or scaled to 1080p, 720p or any width. HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision (profiles 7 and 8) are tone-mapped to SDR so grabs look right.
• Clip trimming. Set in and out points on the timeline, then export the range cut precisely from the original: a Video (MP4, H.264 and AAC) at source resolution or 1080p/720p in three quality levels, kept at the source aspect or placed in a 9:16, 4:5, 1:1, 4:3 or 16:9 frame with zoom, width and a black or blurred background, or a GIF up to 30 seconds. Black bars baked into the picture are always trimmed. All with progress and cancel.
• A timeline built for precision. Waveform, ruler, minimap, drag-to-select, draggable in and out handles, zoom at the pointer with Ctrl and the mouse wheel, frame stepping, and hover thumbnails.
• Your folders, your libraries. Mount one or more media shares read-only, browse them in the app and tick exactly which folders become libraries (a whole movies 4k share or a single sub-folder). Unticked folders are never scanned. Search, lazy-loaded seasons and episodes, and periodic rescans included.

Quick start

docker run -d --name reel-exporter \
  -p 7727:7727 \
  -v /path/to/media:/media:ro \
  -v /path/to/captures:/output \
  -v /path/to/appdata/reel-exporter:/config \
  -e PUID=99 -e PGID=100 -e TZ=Europe/London \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ghcr.io/sufxgit/reel-exporter:latest

Or with Compose: edit the paths in docker-compose.yml and run docker compose up -d. Then open http://<host>:7727.

Install on Unraid

The template lives at unraid/reel-exporter.xml. Unraid 7 has no field for pasting a template URL, so drop the file on the flash drive:

1. Open Tools > Terminal and run:

   wget -O /boot/config/plugins/dockerMan/templates-user/my-ReelExporter.xml \
     https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SuFxGIT/reel-exporter/main/unraid/reel-exporter.xml
   

2. Go to Docker > Add Container, open the Template dropdown and pick ReelExporter under User templates.
3. Check the three paths (the media library is mounted read-only, captures go to the output path, config holds caches) and click Apply.
4. Optionally switch on Autostart in the Docker tab.

The timezone is picked up from Unraid automatically. PUID and PGID default to 99 and 100 (nobody:users) so captures are readable over your shares. The image is published on GitHub Container Registry; if the package is private, log in first with docker login ghcr.io.

Developing on the Unraid box itself? node scripts/unraid-run.mjs --install-template --recreate builds the same docker run command Unraid would, registers the template and icon, and starts the container.

Media sources

Reel Exporter does not scan a mount blindly. Each mounted folder is a source, and inside a source you choose which folders become libraries:

1. Mount your media into the container read-only (/media in the template; add /media2, /media3 or any other container path for more shares).
2. Open Media sources (the folder icon at the top of the sidebar). Mounted folders that are not added yet appear as one-click suggestions; you can also type a container path.
3. Browse the source and tick the folders to import. A folder at any depth can be a library, including the source root itself, but libraries cannot nest. Click a library chip to rename it.
4. Save. Only the ticked folders are scanned; everything else stays hidden. Each ticked folder shows up as its own library in the sidebar.

Sources are stored in /config/sources.json. On first start, /media is registered automatically but nothing is imported until you pick folders. The app only ever reads from a source: it never renames, moves, deletes or writes media files, and the dialog warns when a source is mounted read-write.

The same operations are available over the API: GET /api/sources, POST /api/sources {"path":"/media2"}, GET /api/sources/:id/browse?path=movies, PUT /api/sources/:id/libraries {"libraries":[{"relPath":"movies 4k"},{"relPath":"demos video","name":"Demos"}]}, DELETE /api/sources/:id.

Paths and environment

How it works

• Library. Only the folders you ticked are walked (a 1,500 movie folder takes a couple of seconds) and the result is cached in /config/library.json, so restarts are instant. Movies and shows are recognised from their folder structure, not from the library name: Show (2022)/Season 01/Show - S01E01 - Title.mkv is a show, Movie (1999)/Movie (1999).mkv is a movie. Episode names like S01E01, S01E01-E02, 21x1088, Ep14 and bare numbers inside a season folder all work.
• Preview. The server runs ffmpeg per title, producing a 4 second fragmented-MP4 HLS stream (H.264 and AAC, at most 1080p) that hls.js feeds to the browser. Seeking outside the buffered range restarts ffmpeg at that exact segment, so any codec plays and only the part you watch is transcoded. Idle transcodes stop after a minute.
• Captures use the original file. A screenshot decodes the exact frame at the timestamp and writes it at source resolution unless you asked for a smaller size. A clip re-encodes the selected range from the source into an MP4 that plays anywhere. HDR sources go through zscale and tonemap to BT.709 for both, and any downscale happens before tone-mapping.
• Output layout. Every capture takes the next free number in its title's folder, whatever its kind: /output/<Title (Year)>/1.png, 2.mp4, 3.gif, 4.webp ... for movies and /output/<Show (Year)>/S01E02/1.png for episodes. Nothing is ever renamed automatically: deleting a file leaves the others as they are, and the counter simply continues after the highest number. Rename a capture from the strip under the timeline (click its name or the pen icon; the extension is kept). Drag tiles to change their order; that order is remembered in /config/captures.json, not in the file names. Each tile also has download and delete buttons. Unicode titles are kept as they are.

Export options

The small arrow next to Screenshot and Export opens the options for that capture. They are remembered per browser, and the S and E shortcuts reuse the last choices.

A 2.39:1 film at "1080p" comes out 1920×804 with its bars trimmed. GIFs use a palette built from the clip itself. The API accepts the same fields: POST /api/items/:id/screenshot {"t":600,"format":"webp","quality":80,"maxWidth":1920}, POST /api/items/:id/clip {"start":60,"end":70,"quality":"small","maxWidth":1280,"audio":-1}, {"start":60,"end":70,"aspect":"4:5","shortSide":1080,"focus":{"x":0.3,"y":0.5},"zoom":0.8,"widthScale":0.9,"background":"blur"} (omit shortSide to crop at native resolution) and {"start":60,"end":65,"format":"gif","fps":15,"width":480}.

Keyboard shortcuts

Dragging on the waveform creates a selection; the amber handles adjust it. Clicking the minimap or the waveform seeks.

Development

npm install && npm --prefix web install   # server and web dependencies
npm test                                  # naming rules against real-world file names
npm run dev                               # Express server with tsx watch on :7727 (needs ffmpeg on PATH)
npm --prefix web run dev                  # Vite dev server on :5173, proxies /api to :7727
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up   # the server inside an Alpine container with ffmpeg, against real paths
npm --prefix web run build && npm run build   # production bundles
docker build -t ghcr.io/sufxgit/reel-exporter:latest .
npm run icons                             # re-render the PNG icons from logo.svg
node scripts/smoke-browser.mjs --probe    # headless Chrome playback check (see the script header)

The server is Node 24 and Express 5 in TypeScript; the web app is React 19, Vite, Tailwind CSS 4 and shadcn/ui, with hls.js for playback and wavesurfer.js for the timeline. ffmpeg comes from Alpine 3.24.

License

MIT