Black screen when rendering MP4 videos on Remotion Lambda (audio render, images work)

[shoaibakhtar29]

Bug Report 🐛

When rendering MP4 videos on Remotion using AWS Lambda, the final rendered video shows a black screen for the video layer, while audio and captions render correctly.

The same composition works perfectly when using images instead of videos.
The same video URLs also work correctly in local preview (Player / localhost).

This issue occurs consistently on Lambda, even after trying:

• + calculateMetadata
• staticFile()
• public S3 URLs
• H.264 + yuv420p encoded videos

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a Remotion composition that renders MP4 videos in sequence
2. Use either or with
3. Render locally → works correctly
4. Render on AWS Lambda → video layer is black
5. Audio track plays correctly
6. Captions / text overlays render correctly
7. Render completes successfully and produces MP4

Expected Behavior
MP4 videos should render visually in the Lambda output, same as they do locally.
Actual Behavior
The output video renders:

• Black video frames
• Audio plays correctly
• Captions/text render correctly
• No errors during render

If I replace videos with images, the same composition renders correctly on Lambda.
This suggests a limitation in video decoding / painting in Lambda Chromium.

[JonnyBurger]

Can you give more exact reproduction steps?

Surely I will not be able to reproduce if I just use an arbitrary video.