Forem: Christian Segovia

Most HR platforms can't record video. Adding it takes 4 lines of code.

Christian Segovia — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 16:29:41 +0000

Every HR platform eventually hits the same wall: phone screens don't scale, written assessments miss half the signal, and scheduling live interviews is a bottleneck.

The answer is async video interviews. The problem? Building video recording into your platform has traditionally meant months of work and expensive infrastructure.

We changed that. Here's how any HR tool can add video interviews — today.

Why HR needs video (and why most platforms don't have it)

AI recruiting tools are growing 35% year over year. Resume parsing, chatbot screening, predictive hiring — the stack keeps getting smarter. But there's a blind spot: most of it is text-only.

The richest signal — how someone communicates, thinks on their feet, handles pressure — lives in video. Yet building video recording has meant:

Hiring a media engineering team
Server-side transcoding infrastructure
Fighting iOS Safari and Android quirks
Paying $0.02-0.03/min to a vendor with monthly minimums

So only enterprise platforms like HireVue could offer it. Not anymore.

The shift: browser-native video recording

Modern browser APIs changed the economics completely. Instead of uploading raw video to servers for processing, we transcode directly in the browser using the WebCodecs API.

What this means for HR platforms:

Before	Now
Raw video → server transcoding → storage	Browser encodes MP4 → direct upload
50MB per minute of video	5-10MB per minute
Server infrastructure required	Edge-only, serverless
$0.026/min	$0.01/min
Weeks to integrate	Hours

No plugins. No app installs for candidates. Works on mobile — candidates record from their phone.

4 lines to add video interviews

Here's how you add a candidate recording flow to your React-based HR platform:

import { VidtreoRecorder } from '@vidtreo/recorder-react'

<VidtreoRecorder
  apiKey="your-api-key"
  maxDuration={90}
/>

That gives you: camera selection, recording controls, upload progress, error handling, and automatic transcription. Done.

Not using React? Works with any framework:

<vidtreo-recorder
  api-key="your-api-key"
  max-duration="90">
</vidtreo-recorder>

Or vanilla JS:

import { VidtreoRecorder } from '@vidtreo/recorder'

const recorder = new VidtreoRecorder({
  apiKey: 'your-api-key',
  maxDuration: 90,
  onComplete: (video) => {
    // video.url → the recorded interview
    // video.transcript → AI-generated transcript
    saveToCandidate(video)
  }
})

recorder.start()

What makes this useful for HR specifically

AI transcription is included — not an add-on

Every recording is automatically transcribed. This unlocks:

Searchable interviews — find every candidate who mentioned "Kubernetes" or "team lead experience"
Keyword extraction — flag specific skills or experiences automatically
Multi-language — candidates record in their native language, transcripts in yours
Structured data — turn 60-second videos into parseable, scorable data points

At $0.01/min, transcription included, this is 12x cheaper than running your own OpenAI Whisper pipeline.

Your videos, your storage

Candidate recordings are sensitive data. You need control over where they live.

By default, videos are stored on our edge cloud storage — globally distributed, zero egress fees, fast playback from anywhere. But if your compliance or architecture requires it, you can plug in your own S3 or R2 bucket and videos go straight there. You own the files, we never touch them after upload.

Coming soon: Azure Blob Storage and Google Cloud Storage support.

This matters in HR. GDPR, SOC 2, internal data policies — your legal team will ask "where do the videos live?" With Vidtreo, the answer is wherever you decide.

The use cases are broader than you think

Startups (no HR team): Post a job, include a link to record a 60-second intro. Review candidates async. Cost for 100 candidates: ~$1.

ATS platforms: One-way interviews, video assessments ("walk me through your portfolio"), onboarding recordings where new hires introduce themselves.

Staffing agencies: Batch-send recording links to 200 candidates. 1-minute videos replace 15-minute phone screens. Forward clips directly to hiring managers.

Universities: Scale admission interviews, oral exams, career services practice sessions.

The math for your platform

If you're building an HR tool, here's the business case:

Scenario	Volume	Cost
Small ATS, 50 interviews/month	50 min	$0.50/month
Mid-size platform, 500/month	500 min	$5/month
Staffing agency, 5,000/month	5,000 min	$50/month
Enterprise, 50,000/month	50,000 min	$500/month

Compare that to HireVue's enterprise contracts or building your own video infrastructure. The ROI is immediate.

Try it

Add video recording to your HR platform:

$1 free credit — enough for ~100 recordings to prototype
$0.01/min — no monthly fees, no minimums
AI transcription included — every recording, automatically
React, Web Component, or vanilla JS

Website: vidtreo.com
Docs: docs.vidtreo.com
SDK: npm install @vidtreo/recorder

I'm the founder. We built this because we saw HR platforms struggling with the same video infrastructure problem over and over. If you're building in the HR/recruiting space, I'd love to hear what you're working on — drop a comment or DM.

We built a video recording API at $0.01/min. Here's the tech that made it possible.

Christian Segovia — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 04:17:57 +0000

Most video recording APIs charge $0.02-0.03 per minute. We built one for $0.01/min — 62% cheaper — and it actually works better.

This isn't a pricing gimmick. It's what happens when you rebuild video recording with modern browser APIs instead of legacy server infrastructure.

Here's the full technical breakdown.

The problem we solved

Traditional video recording services follow this flow:

User records video in browser
Raw video uploads to server
Server transcodes to MP4
Server stores the file
You pay for compute, bandwidth, and storage

Steps 2-4 are expensive. Transcoding servers, egress fees, processing time — it adds up fast. That's why Ziggeo charges $0.026/min and others charge even more.

We asked: what if the browser did most of the work?

Our architecture: edge-first, client-side transcoding

WebCodecs API for client-side transcoding

Instead of uploading raw video and transcoding on servers, our SDK uses the WebCodecs API to transcode video to H.264 MP4 directly in the user's browser.

import { VidtreoRecorder } from '@vidtreo/recorder'const recorder = new VidtreoRecorder({
  apiKey: 'your-api-key'
})

// That's it. Recording, transcoding, and upload are handled.
recorder.start()

The video that reaches our servers is already a properly encoded MP4. No server-side transcoding needed.

Cost saved: ~60% of traditional processing costs.

Cloudflare Workers for edge processing

Our API runs on Cloudflare Workers — serverless functions deployed to 200+ cities worldwide. No origin servers. No EC2 instances. No scaling headaches.

Every API request is processed at the edge node closest to the user. Sub-100ms latency globally.

Cost saved: ~70% compared to traditional server infrastructure.

R2 Storage for zero egress fees

Video files are stored on Cloudflare R2, which charges $0.015/GB for storage and $0 for egress. Compare that to AWS S3's $0.09/GB egress fees.

When your users watch or download their recorded videos, we pay nothing for bandwidth.

Cost saved: 100% of egress fees.

The math behind $0.01/min

Here's why our costs are fundamentally lower for a 1-minute HD (720p) recording:

Component	VIDTREO	Traditional
Transcoding	$0 (client-side)	Server GPU costs
Edge processing	Minimal (Workers)	Origin server costs
Storage	R2 (low cost)	S3 + replication
Egress	$0 (R2)	$0.09/GB (S3)
AI transcription	Included	Extra cost

The architecture difference is real. We charge $0.01/min. Competitors charge $0.026/min because their infrastructure requires it.

What you get

SDKs: React, Vanilla JS, and Web Components
Quality: SD to 4K recording (the only service with 4K at this price point)
Screen recording: Capture screen, camera, or both
AI built-in: Automatic transcription and summaries, 12x cheaper than OpenAI
Webhooks: Real-time event notifications for your pipeline
S3-compatible storage: Native support for sending videos to your own S3 buckets
Free tier: 100 minutes/month, no credit card required
TypeScript: Full type safety, great DX

Quick start (React)

import { useVidtreoRecorder } from '@vidtreo/recorder-react'function VideoRecorder() {
  const { startRecording, stopRecording, isRecording } = useVidtreoRecorder({
    apiKey: 'your-api-key',
    quality: 'hd',
    onComplete: (video) => {
      console.log('Video URL:', video.url)
      console.log('Transcript:', video.transcript)
    }
  })

  return (
    <button onClick={isRecording ? stopRecording : startRecording}>
      {isRecording ? 'Stop' : 'Record'}
    </button>
  )
}

Web Component (framework-agnostic)

<vidtreo-recorder
  api-key="your-api-key"
  quality="hd"
  on-complete="handleVideo">
</vidtreo-recorder>

Real-world usage

We're already in production with an enterprise client processing thousands of minutes monthly. The stack handles:

4K recordings without dropped frames
Automatic retry on upload failures (IndexedDB persistence)
Device management (camera/mic switching mid-recording)
Real-time progress indicators

What's next

We're actively building:

Multi-track recording (camera + screen simultaneously)
Custom recording UI components
Azure Blob Storage and Google Cloud Storage integrations

Try it

100 free minutes. No credit card. No per-seat pricing.

Website: vidtreo.com
Docs: docs.vidtreo.com
SDK: npm install @vidtreo/recorderI'm the founder — happy to answer any questions in the comments. If you're currently paying for video recording infrastructure, I'd genuinely love to hear about your setup and pain points.