Cloud Functions for Firebase: completing long processes without touching maximum timeout

Question

I have to transcode videos from webm to mp4 when they\'re uploaded to firebase storage. I have a code demo here that works, but if the uploaded video is too large, firebase

Answer 1

Cloud Functions for Firebase is not well suited (and not supported) for long-running tasks that can go beyond the maximum timeout. Your only real chance at using only Cloud Functions to perform very heavy compute operations is to find a way to split up the work into multiple function invocations, then join the results of all that work into a final product. For something like video transcoding, that sounds like a very difficult task.

Instead, consider using a function to trigger a long-running task in App Engine or Compute Engine.

Answer 2

As follow up for the random anonymous person who tries to figure out how to get past transcoding videos or some other long processes, here's a version of the same code example I gave that instead sends a http request to a google app engine process which transcodes the file. No documentation for it as of right now, but looking at Firebase/functions/index.js code and the app.js code may help you with your issue.

https://github.com/Scew5145/GCSConvertDemo

Good luck.