remotion-dev/remotion · error · Error

No frames were added to the canvas recording.

Error message

No frames were added to the canvas recording.

What it means

Inside `finalizeRecording`, after awaiting the last frame and checking `hasEncodingError`, the code requires `recording.frameCount` to be non-zero. A zero frame count means no `VideoSample` was ever pushed into the Mediabunny source, so there is nothing to encode. Thrown before closing the source and finalizing output.

Source

Thrown at packages/canvas-capture-extension/src/recorder.ts:329

		} finally {
			recording.isEncodingFrame = false;
		}
	})();
	recording.lastFramePromise.catch(() => undefined);
};

const finalizeRecording = async (
	recording: RecordingState,
	filename: string,
	format: CaptureFormat,
): Promise<File> => {
	await recording.lastFramePromise;
	if (recording.hasEncodingError) {
		throw recording.encodingError;
	}

	if (recording.frameCount === 0) {
		throw new Error('No frames were added to the canvas recording.');
	}

	recording.source.close();
	await recording.output.finalize();

	if (!recording.target.buffer) {
		throw new Error('Mediabunny did not return an output buffer.');
	}

	const captureData = JSON.stringify({
		startedAt: recording.startedAt,
		endedAt: performance.now(),
		captureMetadata: recording.captureMetadata,
		mouseMovements: recording.mouseMovements,
		pointerClicks: recording.pointerClicks,
	});

	const {

View on GitHub (pinned to 78fe4bb3fd)

Solutions

1. Ensure at least one frame is added before stopping — wait for a paint cycle or a fixed delay.
2. Verify the page is animating/repainting so the draw loop pushes frames.
3. Check for and surface `this.#paintError` before stopping.
4. Do not stop a recorder that never started drawing.

let frameCount = 0;
const onFrame = () => { frameCount++; };
// before stopping:
if (frameCount === 0) throw new Error('No frames captured yet; wait for a paint.');

try {
  await recorder.stopRecording();
} catch (e) {
  if (e instanceof Error && /No frames were added/.test(e.message)) {
    await waitForPaint();
    // restart session rather than retrying the same one.
  }
  throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Stopping the recorder before any frame was drawn/added; the draw loop never fired because the page never repainted; the recorder started but `#draw()` was never invoked before `stopRecording()`.

Common situations: Start immediately followed by stop; capturing a static page that does not request animation frames; an earlier paint error prevented frames from being added but did not set `hasEncodingError`.

Related errors

• No canvas recording was available to open.
• ${label} encoding is not supported at ${size.width}×${size.h
• Mediabunny did not return an output buffer.
• Canvas capture scale must be greater than 0.
• The display canvas would be ${displayWidth}×${displayHeight}

AI-assisted analysis of remotion-dev/remotion@78fe4bb3fd (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/3886e0382b5f4191. Report an issue: GitHub.