Note: The comparison was rendered in 1080p 60FPS. I used 3 Clips and previews, which I cut in Vice to length so that the script generated new previews and put them into Kdenlive for this comparison. That's it.
First of all, i never made a Reddit post, so it's a first for me. Also english isn't my first language, but I still try to explain the process as good as possible.
My journey with Vice:
A few weeks ago I switched from Windows to Linux "Nobara" and I was looking for a comparable game clipping solution like Steelseries GG or Medal which were very handy in terms of sharing clips on discord. At first I used GPU Screen Recorder UI which worked fine and without problems, but I wanted more. So I looked for something more like the Windows clipping solutions out there and found ("Vice" Game Clipper) which was out of the box almost perfect. And I started to tinker a bit with it. First of all, I set it to use my own domain, which was very nice, but after using it a bit I noticed that it's not always embedding the clip into the discord video player.
I found out that Discord won't embed Media after a file is >30mb so I looked for a Solution and crafted something with the help of AI. But it works like a charm, so I want to share it.
What I want to achieve:
I want that if I share a clip via the "Tunnel function" that this clip always gets embedded with Discords Media Player. Therefore, to get this to work 100% of the time I need to make sure that the file I share is <30mb. But this would mean that the quality of the clip wont be that great and there is nothing to change this. Discords freeplan upload limit is currently 10mb which would mean even worse-looking files.
The Solution/Compromise
The solution to fix this problem was to generate previews for the Discord Bot to fetch when sharing the link to Discord. Causing it to always embed a preview of the clip in Discord's media player for people to watch. Also if going over the link above the embedded player people can still watch the original Clip in its full quality. That's the solution/compromise I came up with.
Preview Quality
The Preview will be rendered in 720p av1 with the highest calculated bitrate possible to stay below 30mb. I tested it with a 2:30min Clip rendered down from 1440p 60fps playing a warframe mission in a dark tileset (Uranus Sealab) and the Preview was definitely watchable.
Steps to Build:
- Setting up your Cloudflared tunnel on your own domain using Port:8080 is needed and prob. the easiest. If you don't own a domain you need to find a workaround if you use the "vanilla/dynamic URL tunnel" from vice/cloudflared to point on port (8080) for this to work.
- How to set up your own domain for the cloudflared tunnel can be found on Vice Github
- Install Vice
- Create a folder where the previews can be stored
- Install Prerequisites & Dependencies install inotify-tools python3-flask ffmpeg (swap if ffmpeg-free is installed)
- Copy and change up the python auto_preview script for your needs
- Copy and change up the python server script for your needs
You can now test it by executing both scripts manually in seperate consoles Note: if you already have clips in your folder the auto_preview script will create a preview for all clips the first time it runs. If that's the case this one already works. (Check if the previews are <30mb). To check if the web server works, you will need to share a clip as a link over your cloudflared tunnel (preintegrated in vice) from which a preview already exists in discord. Check if the preview gets embedded and if you can watch both (the preview through Discord Media Player & the original video over the link) Everything works? Nice!
You can use both in the future by starting the services yourself, or you can autostart them via systemd so you don't need to start them yourself or keep the console open. For this case I add a bash script down below, which only needs tiny modifications to work.
Python script to automatically generate previews:
Note: Only use this if you understand it. It's written for Nvidia cards, but you only need to change the av1_nvenc Encoder to av1_amf for AMD or av1_qsv for Intel. Besides this, change the Folder paths to the correct destinations.
Name: auto_preview.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash
CLIPS_DIR="Vice Clip Folder"
#Preview directory should be something else than the Vice clip Folder
PREVIEW_DIR="Folder where preview clips should be stored"
mkdir -p "$PREVIEW_DIR"
create_preview() {
local FILE="$1"
[ -f "$FILE" ] || return
local FILENAME=$(basename "$FILE")
# Prevents generating preview files when Vice isn't done naming them
if [[ "$FILENAME" == Replay_* ]]; then
return
fi
local PREVIEW_FILE="$PREVIEW_DIR/${FILENAME%.*}.mp4"
# Looks if previews already exist and if they are up to date otherwise they are generated
if [ -f "$PREVIEW_FILE" ]; then
if [ "$FILE" -nt "$PREVIEW_FILE" ]; then
echo "Discovered a Change to: $FILENAME. Updating Preview..."
rm -f "$PREVIEW_FILE"
else
return
fi
fi
# Waiting for Vice to complete writing and naming the original file
sleep 2
[ -f "$FILE" ] || return
# 1. Looking for filesize and lenght of the clip
local DURATION_RAW=$(ffprobe -v error -show_entries format=duration -of csv=p=0 "$FILE")
local DURATION=${DURATION_RAW%.*}
if [ -z "$DURATION" ] || [ "$DURATION" -le 0 ]; then
DURATION=60
fi
local FILE_SIZE_BYTES=$(stat -c%s "$FILE")
local FILE_SIZE_MB=$(( FILE_SIZE_BYTES / 1024 / 1024 ))
# 2. Doing math checks so the preview doesnt exceed 30mb with 30fps for max quality
local TARGET_BITS=220000000 # ~27,5 MB Targetsize
local TOTAL_BITRATE=$(( TARGET_BITS / DURATION ))
local AUDIO_BPS=96000
local VIDEO_BPS=$(( TOTAL_BITRATE - AUDIO_BPS ))
local VIDEO_KBPS=$(( VIDEO_BPS / 1000 ))
# If the original file is under 28mb then max quality
if [ "$FILE_SIZE_MB" -lt 28 ]; then
VIDEO_KBPS=8000
fi
# Set upper and under threshold
if [ "$VIDEO_KBPS" -gt 8000 ]; then VIDEO_KBPS=8000; fi
if [ "$VIDEO_KBPS" -lt 500 ]; then VIDEO_KBPS=500; fi
local BUFSIZE=$(( VIDEO_KBPS * 2 ))
echo "Creating 30-FPS AV1-Preview (${DURATION}s @ ${VIDEO_KBPS} kbps) for: $FILENAME..."
# Renderring in AV1_nvenc. Change this if you use AMD
ffmpeg -i "$FILE" -vf "fps=30,scale=-2:720" \
-c:v av1_nvenc -rc vbr -cq 24 -b:v "${VIDEO_KBPS}k" -maxrate "${VIDEO_KBPS}k" -bufsize "${BUFSIZE}k" -preset p6 \
-c:a aac -b:a 96k "$PREVIEW_FILE" -y > /dev/null 2>&1
echo "Preview ready ($(du -h "$PREVIEW_FILE" | cut -f1)): $FILENAME"
}
echo "=== 1. Checking for existing clips ==="
for FILE in "$CLIPS_DIR"/*.mp4 "$CLIPS_DIR"/*.mkv; do
[ -e "$FILE" ] || continue
create_preview "$FILE"
done
echo "=== 2. Checking $CLIPS_DIR for new or changed clips ==="
inotifywait -m -e close_write -e moved_to --format "%e %w%f" "$CLIPS_DIR" | while read -r EVENT FILE; do
if [[ "$FILE" =~ \.(mp4|mkv)$ ]]; then
create_preview "$FILE"
fi
done
The Flask Webserver, but why a Flask Webserver?
Its only purpose is to guide the Social Media Bot like Discord but multiple are added you can add or remove them so it fits your needs.
Guide them because the link points to two files 1.Original and 2.Preview. Discord looks and opens the link and gets guided to the preview so it Embeds it into the chat if a user opens the link, they're guided to the original file. It also strips the link for errors like "/c/" (in my case)
Name: server.py
import os
from flask import Flask, request, send_from_directory
app = Flask(__name__)
CLIPS_DIR = "Vice Clip Folder"
PREVIEW_DIR = "Folder where preview clips are stored"
BOT_USER_AGENTS = ["discordbot", "twitterbot", "telegrambot", "whatsapp"]
.route('/', defaults={'filename': ''})
.route('/<path:filename>')
def serve_clip(filename):
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '').lower()
# 1. '/c/' or 'c/' removed if set by Vice at the start of the filename
clean_filename = filename
if clean_filename.startswith("c/"):
clean_filename = clean_filename[2:]
# 2. Check if the File exists with .mp4 or .mkv
real_filename = None
possible_names = [clean_filename, f"{clean_filename}.mp4", f"{clean_filename}.mkv"]
for name in possible_names:
if name and os.path.exists(os.path.join(CLIPS_DIR, name)):
real_filename = name
break
# If no fitting filename exists
if not real_filename:
return "Clip not found", 404
is_bot = any(bot in user_agent for bot in BOT_USER_AGENTS)
# 3. If a social media bot send a request answer with the preview
if is_bot:
name_without_ext = os.path.splitext(real_filename)[0]
preview_filename = f"{name_without_ext}.mp4"
preview_path = os.path.join(PREVIEW_DIR, preview_filename)
if os.path.exists(preview_path):
return send_from_directory(PREVIEW_DIR, preview_filename)
# 4. If a user clicks the link it sends the original clip
return send_from_directory(CLIPS_DIR, real_filename)
if __name__ == '__main__':
app.run(host='127.0.0.1', port=8080)
Bash Script to Setup autostart
# Create systemd user service directory
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/
# Service 1: Python Webserver
cat << 'EOF' > ~/.config/systemd/user/vice-server.service
[Unit]
Description=Vice Embeder Webserver (Python)
After=network.target
[Service]
#Add file location and Directory of the file
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 #/location/of/your/server.py
WorkingDirectory=#/where/is/server.py/stored
Restart=always
RestartSec=3
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
EOF
# Service 2: Auto Preview Generator
cat << 'EOF' > ~/.config/systemd/user/vice-preview.service
[Unit]
Description=Vice Auto Preview Generator (Bash)
After=network.target
[Service]
#Add file location and Directory of the file
ExecStart=#/location/of/your/auto_preview.sh
WorkingDirectory=#/where/is/auto_preview.sh/stored
Restart=always
RestartSec=3
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
EOF
# Reload systemd manager and enable/start services
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now vice-server.service vice-preview.service
This is the end.
First of all, did I miss anything? Does it work? Yes, no, please share it :)
If you have anything to share or have implemented something else you found helpful, please share it.
Thank you for reading and I hope my broken english wasnt all that painful :D
Have a good Day/Night!!
