Video editing from Java, without FFmpeg on your machine.

What running FFmpeg from Java usually costs

• A binary in the container image, which grows the image and puts a native dependency into a deployment that had none.
• The wrappers that bundle FFmpeg for you ship one build per platform, so the size comes back with a different name.
• ProcessBuilder hands you an exit code and a stream of stderr, so a wrong argument becomes a string to parse rather than a validation failure.

Trim a clip and wait for the file

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.*;
import java.time.Duration;

public class Kinopipe {
    private static final String BASE = "https://kinopipe.com/api/v1";
    private static final HttpClient CLIENT = HttpClient.newHttpClient();
    private static final String KEY = System.getenv("KINOPIPE_API_KEY");

    static String send(HttpRequest.Builder builder) throws Exception {
        HttpRequest request = builder
            .header("Authorization", "Bearer " + KEY)
            .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
            .timeout(Duration.ofSeconds(30))
            .build();
        return CLIENT.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString()).body();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        String body = """
            {
              "inputs": [{ "id": "main", "url": "https://example.com/interview.mp4" }],
              "options": { "start": 12, "end": 48 }
            }
            """;

        String started = send(HttpRequest.newBuilder(URI.create(BASE + "/tools/trim-video"))
            .POST(HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString(body)));
        String jobId = started.split("\"jobId\":\"")[1].split("\"")[0];

        while (true) {
            String job = send(HttpRequest.newBuilder(URI.create(BASE + "/jobs/" + jobId)).GET());
            if (job.contains("\"status\":\"succeeded\"") || job.contains("\"status\":\"failed\"")) {
                System.out.println(job);
                return;
            }
            Thread.sleep(2000);
        }
    }
}

• java.net.http is in the JDK from 11, so nothing above needs a dependency. Use Jackson or Gson rather than splitting strings once this is more than an example.
• A split job returns every segment under outputs rather than output, which matters if you call split-video or split-video-by-scenes.
• Send an Idempotency-Key header when you retry, and the retry returns the original job instead of paying for a second render.

FAQ