WeBrake

WeBrake ☕

A self-hosted web UI for HandBrake CLI, built to run inside an Alpine Linux LXC on Proxmox. Upload media from any PC on your network, remux or re-encode it with the full range of HandBrake options (hardware encoders included when a GPU is passed through), watch live progress bars, and download the results straight back to the uploading machine.

Cream-and-gold by day, dark-roast by night.

One-liner install

Run this inside an existing Alpine LXC (as root). It never runs on, or installs anything from, the Proxmox host:

wget -qO- https://gogs.av2x.dev/av2x/WeBrake/raw/main/install.sh | ash

The installer will:

1. Enable the Alpine community repo and apk add Python 3, Flask, HandBrakeCLI, and VA-API driver packages.
2. Pull app.py, index.html, and update.sh from this repository into /opt/webrake.
3. Generate a local token.json containing the API token and Flask secret. This file is created on the container at install time — it is never pulled from the repo and must never be committed to it (.gitignore enforces this).
4. Register and start an OpenRC service (rc-service webrake start, enabled at boot).

When it finishes it prints the URL (default port 8090) and the API token. Paste the token into the UI once; it is remembered by your browser.

Updating

/opt/webrake/update.sh

The updater pulls fresh app.py and index.html (and itself) directly from the repo, keeps a .bak of the previous versions, leaves token.json untouched, and restarts the service. Nothing changes unless the repo copies differ.

GPU passthrough (Proxmox host → LXC)

WeBrake itself installs nothing on the host, but hardware encoding requires the host to expose the GPU device nodes to the container. On the Proxmox host, edit /etc/pve/lxc/<CTID>.conf:

Intel / AMD (VA-API, QSV):

dev0: /dev/dri/renderD128,gid=44

(or on older Proxmox versions:)

lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow: c 226:* rwm
lxc.mount.entry: /dev/dri dev/dri none bind,optional,create=dir

NVIDIA (NVENC):

lxc.cgroup2.devices.allow: c 195:* rwm
lxc.mount.entry: /dev/nvidia0 dev/nvidia0 none bind,optional,create=file
lxc.mount.entry: /dev/nvidiactl dev/nvidiactl none bind,optional,create=file
lxc.mount.entry: /dev/nvidia-uvm dev/nvidia-uvm none bind,optional,create=file

Restart the container afterwards. WeBrake auto-detects /dev/dri and /dev/nvidia*, shows the result in the header badge, and marks hardware encoders (⚡ nvenc_*, qsv_*, vce_*) in the encoder list. If no GPU is visible it falls back to software encoders and tells you so.

Using it

1. Open http://<container-ip>:8090 and enter the API token.
2. Drag a video into the drop zone — the upload has its own progress bar and lands in /var/lib/webrake/uploads.
3. Optionally Scan the source to list its resolution, audio, and subtitle tracks.
4. Configure the encode across the tabs — General (container, chapters, ranges), Video (encoder, RF/bitrate, presets/tune/profile/level, framerate), Dimensions (resize, crop, anamorphic, rotate, pad), Filters (deinterlace, decomb, detelecine, denoise, sharpen, deblock, colorspace, grayscale), Audio (tracks, encoders, mixdown, DRC, gain, passthru masks), and Subtitles (selection, burn-in, forced, external SRT).
5. Anything not covered by a control is still available: the Advanced tab appends raw HandBrakeCLI arguments verbatim, so every flag in the CLI reference works.
6. Queue the encode. Jobs run one at a time with a live gold progress bar, fps, average fps, ETA, pass counter, full log viewer, and the exact command line used.
7. When a job is done, hit Download to pull the file back to the PC you're browsing from. Cancel and delete work as expected; deleting a job also removes its output and log.

Files & layout

Path	Purpose
/opt/webrake/app.py	Flask backend (pulled from repo)
/opt/webrake/index.html	Web UI (pulled from repo)
/opt/webrake/update.sh	Updater (pulled from repo)
/opt/webrake/token.json	Local secrets — generated at install, never in the repo
/var/lib/webrake/uploads	Uploaded sources
/var/lib/webrake/output	Finished encodes
/var/lib/webrake/logs	Per-job HandBrake logs
/etc/init.d/webrake	OpenRC service

Environment overrides: WEBRAKE_PORT (default 8090), WEBRAKE_DATA, WEBRAKE_REPO (alternate raw-file base URL for install/update).

Notes & limits

• Uploads are capped at 64 GiB per file.
• One encode runs at a time; the rest wait in the queue (HandBrake saturates the machine anyway).
• The API token gates every endpoint. If you expose WeBrake beyond your LAN, put it behind HTTPS (reverse proxy) — the token travels in a header.
• "Remuxing" without re-encoding: set audio encoder to copy, add --audio-copy-mask for the codecs to pass through, and pick a fast video path — or drive it entirely from the Advanced tab.

License / repo

Source of truth: https://gogs.av2x.dev/av2x/WeBrake