Start and stop recording

This guide focuses on using room composite (browser-based) recordings.

A composite recording is a single MP4 file that records all peers and their tracks (audio, video and screen share). It captures the experience that a peer has in the room and is equivalent to recordings generated from Google Meet and Zoom.

A composite recording is different from track-level recordings, which generate single file per audio/video track. To use track-level recordings, enable SFU recordings on your template.

Start recording with API

Use the server-side API to start recording for a given room (passed as room_id in the request body).

Also see API reference.


curl --request POST 'https://api.100ms.live/v2/recordings/room/<room_id>/start' \
    --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --header 'Authorization: Bearer <management_token>' \
    --data-raw '{
        "meeting_url" : "<meeting_url>",
        "resolution" : {"width": 1280, "height": 720}
    }'

Internally, this API launches a browser window that opens the meeting_url of the room. This browser instance joins the room and records it, similar to what a peer would do. You can define a role for this peer to ensure the peer's tile is not visible.

meeting_url

This is a URL which lands into the room directly. You can use 100ms room links that look like:


https://<domain>.app.100ms.live/preview/<room_id>/<role>?skip_preview=true

Other supported query parameters:

skip_preview=true: skips the preview page and directly joins the meeting with header and controls disabled
skip_preview_headful=true: skips the preview page and directly joins the meeting with header and controls enabled
auth_token=token1234: Use this to pass an auth token to authenticate the room join action
ui_mode=activespeaker: Render active speaker mode by default
name=johndoe: Use this to add a name for the peer

Automate start recording (Optional)

Instead of relying on peers in the room to start recording, you use room lifecycle events to automate start recording.

To do so, set up a webhook listener and act on the relevant webhook:

Start recording for every session: Use the session.open.success event to start recording (with the above API)
Start recording when a particular peer joins: Use the peer.join.success event to start recording (with the above API)

Listen to recording status updates

Start recording is asynchronous and you can listen to status changes to the recording jobs with webhooks.

beam.started.success event: This is sent when recording starts successfully
beam.recording.success event: This is sent when recording ends successfully
beam.failure event: This is sent when there is a failure

Stop recording with API

Use the server-side API to end recording for a given room (passed as room_id in the request body).


curl --request POST 'https://api.100ms.live/v2/recordings/room/<room_id>/stop' \
    --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --header 'Authorization: Bearer <management_token>'

Also see API reference.

Automatically stop recording

Note that recording automatically ends in 5 minutes after all peers (excluding Beam) have left the room.

To instantly end recording when peers have left the room, you can also chain up our APIs to run relevant business logic before stopping the recording. This ensures the video file will not have the extra 5 minutes of empty frames.

Listen to the peer.leave.success webhook event
Make an API call to get peers in the session with the active room APIs: fetching the active room (session) and relevant peer info
If Beam (bot peer that records the session) is the only peer in the room, you can end the recording with the above API

Get recording assets

There are multiple ways to get the recording assets (files). By default, recording assets are saved in 100ms storage buckets and retained up to 15 days. We recommend configuring your own storage buckets so that assets are automatically transferred and you control their retention lifecycle.

If you are relying on the 100ms storage bucket, we recommend downloading the asset from the dashboard or programmatically via the webhook/API.

Configure your own storage

100ms supports AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage and Alibaba OSS as storage buckets. These can be configured on the 100ms dashboard.

Download assets from dashboard

Recording assets can be downloaded from the 100ms dashboard. Use the sessions page to navigate to the relevant session page, which has links to the recorded assets.

Recording links

Download assets via webhooks

The beam.recording.success webhook event contains the pre-signed URL to the recording asset (in the property called recording_presigned_url). This is a short-lived URL, that can be used to download the asset.

Fetch assets via API

You can use the recording assets REST APIs to fetch the assets:

List recording assets for a room/session
Generate a pre-signed URL for an asset

Release Notes Customize recording

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