Video editing platform modernization

Solution

Initially, the Itransition team consisted of two developers. They began by analyzing the existing platform and internal documentation sent by the customer. After that, they fixed the detected bugs and introduced minor enhancements to the platform. Satisfied with the level of service we provided, the customer engaged our specialists in modifying the functionality of add-ons as well as the development of the screencast solution. Within three months, the Itransition team working on the project grew to twelve people. 

Platform enhancements

The customer’s major priority for this project were improvements to their existing add-ons. Our team rewrote and refactored the code and extended the databases of the add-ons. These changes allowed the customer to extend the platform with new add-ons and modify the existing ones.

We also implemented the functionality enabling the customer’s editors to make changes to the add-ons chosen by users. For example, an editor can change the add-on pricing if the scope of work exceeds the standard offer or add other add-ons to the user’s subscription plan to help them accomplish their video goals.

The platform also has a reporting feature connected to add-ons that allows the customer to quickly get necessary data on each specific user. We configured this feature to ensure it displays the correct information and implemented the functionality allowing the customer to generate comprehensive user reports. Users who rarely apply add-ons are automatically marked in the report as users at risk of churning.

Beyond that, the Itransition team improved the customer’s notification process since many of their editors complained about a large number of unnecessary notifications. Our team reviewed and changed the list of notification recipients and discontinued some notification types.

Screencast sub-application development

Aiming to extend their service offering and grow the platform’s user base, the customer decided to build a new subscription-based sub-application for screen recording. The customer’s CTO researched similar solutions on the market and developed a PoC using the Electron framework. Proceeding from the PoC, our team developed the full-fledged solution.

Itransition developed screencast applications for Mac and Windows which allow users to capture their camera or desktop screen. Using the solution, users can film demos, lectures, tutorials, training, and more types of content. We equipped the app with features allowing users to draw directly on the screen, pause and resume recording, and share the video. We also added the possibility to add comments to the recorded video so that the viewers could leave their feedback. All videos created with the screencast app are stored in the video editing platform. 

On the user’s side, the solution has the following features:

• Menubar, enabling user authentication, changing settings, and changing the recording modes.
• Camera, displaying the camera image and enabling its configuration.
• Controls, allowing to pause, restart and turn off the recording.
• Drawer, displaying drawing and handwriting notes during the recording.

Application signing and notarizing

Starting from macOS 10.14.5, Apple made it mandatory to sign and notarize a new application, so we helped the customer to accomplish these tasks. 

First, we purchased an application certificate in the Apple developer account with the necessary information for notarization, including certificate number, the app’s bundle ID, etc. As it turned out, to sign the application we needed to add camera and microphone permissions as well as accessibility permissions. Our team leveraged Electron’s native API to create camera and microphone permissions and used NPM libraries to add accessibility permissions. 

When the application was signed, it was automatically sent to Apple servers by the Electron-notarize library for an automated notarization. After the notarization was completed, the system stapled the app.

While Windows doesn’t require application notarization, we still helped the customer with signing the software. 

The AWS-based microservices architecture 

We build the applications using the microservices architecture. It consists of 20+ separate modules built around specific features and interacting with each other via REST APIs. We created application modules using AWS services and applied the following AWS tools during applications development:    

• Amazon ECS for container management 
• Amazon CloudWatch and New Relic for performance monitoring
• Amazon RDS for database operation management across the USA, Australia, Europe, and Asia
• AWS CodePipeline for managing CI/CD activities
• AWS CloudFormation and Terraform for describing app environments and network settings in text format
• AWS Systems Manager for managing the infrastructure across private and local networks

DevOps automation

We applied DevOps and CI/CD practices and AWS CodePipeline service to automate our release pipelines. Initially, the build took from five to six minutes, so our DevOps engineer reconfigured the build process by rewriting Docker files and setting up caching. This way, Docker could use a cache layer for each new build, which allowed us to reduce the build time to 1.5 minutes, achieving a 70% performance increase.

Process

Our team worked in two-week sprints. Before each sprint began, we had a meeting with Itransition’s project manager and business analyst and the customer’s product owner and product manager where we discussed the scope of work for the next sprint and planned the tasks for our team. 

Our project manager reported our team progress daily via emails and provided a sprint report at the end of each sprint. The reports contained sprint goals, completed and uncompleted tasks, etc. as well as burndown and team velocity charts, plans for the next sprint, and the predictions for possible project bottlenecks.