This project demonstrates how to offload CPU-intensive tasks (like image resizing and video compression) using the worker_threads module in Node.js. By delegating heavy processing to worker threads, the main thread remains free to handle incoming HTTP requests, making the application highly scalable and responsive.

• 📸 Image Resizing (uses sharp in a worker thread)
• 🎥 Video Compression (uses ffmpeg via fluent-ffmpeg in a worker thread)
• ⚡ Efficient processing without blocking the main thread
• 🧵 Utilizes Node.js worker_threads for parallelism
• 📁 File upload via multer
• 🗃️ Output files are saved to separate folders (resized/, processed/)

image-video-processor/
├── controllers/
│   ├── imageController.js
│   └── videoController.js
├── routes/
│   ├── image.js
│   └── video.js
├── workers/
│   ├── resizeWorker.js
│   └── videoWorker.js
├── resized/           # Processed images
├── processed/         # Compressed videos
├── uploads/           # Temporary uploads
├── server.js
├── package.json
└── README.md

Install the required packages:

npm install express multer sharp fluent-ffmpeg

You also need FFmpeg installed on your system:

# Arch
sudo pacman -S ffmpeg

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install ffmpeg

# macOS
brew install ffmpeg

In traditional Node.js (single-threaded), CPU-intensive tasks block the event loop, making the app unresponsive. With worker_threads, heavy jobs run in parallel threads, leaving the main thread free to handle more requests.

Endpoint:

POST /api/image/resize

Payload:

• Type: multipart/form-data
• Field: image (file)

curl Example:

curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/image/resize \
  -H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" \
  -F "image=@/absolute/path/to/image.jpg"

Response:

{
  "message": "Image resized successfully",
  "output": "resized/resized-image-1696600000000.jpg"
}

Endpoint:

POST /api/video/compress

Payload:

• Type: multipart/form-data
• Field: video (file)

curl Example:

curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/video/compress \
  -H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" \
  -F "video=@/absolute/path/to/video.mp4"

Response:

{
  "message": "Video processed successfully",
  "output": "processed/compressed-video-1696600000000.mp4"
}

# Start server
node server.js

Server runs on:

http://localhost:5000

• Node.js
• Express.js
• worker_threads
• multer
• sharp
• fluent-ffmpeg