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HTMLCanvasElement: captureStream() method

The HTMLCanvasElement captureStream() method returns a MediaStream which includes a CanvasCaptureMediaStreamTrack containing a real-time video capture of the canvas's contents.

Syntax

js

captureStream(frameRate)

Parameters

frameRate Optional

A double-precision floating-point value that indicates the rate of capture of each frame. If not set, a new frame will be captured each time the canvas changes; if set to 0, frames will not be captured automatically; instead, they will only be captured when the returned track's requestFrame() method is called.

Return value

A reference to a MediaStream object, which has a single CanvasCaptureMediaStreamTrack in it.

Exceptions

NotSupportedError DOMException

Thrown if the value of frameRate is negative.

SecurityError DOMException

The canvas's bitmap is not origin clean; at least some of its contents have or may have been loaded from a site other than the one from which the document itself was loaded.

Example

js

// Find the canvas element to capture
const canvasElt = document.querySelector("canvas");

// Get the stream
const stream = canvasElt.captureStream(25); // 25 FPS

// Do things to the stream
// E.g. Send it to another computer using an RTCPeerConnection
//      pc is an RTCPeerConnection created elsewhere
stream.getTracks().forEach((track) => pc.addTrack(track, stream));

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Internet Explorer Opera Safari WebView Android Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet
captureStream 51 79 43 No 36 11 51 51 43 36 11 5.0

See also

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Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLCanvasElement/captureStream