Download engines

When an input is fetched from a URL (type: "remote"), the engine field controls how it's retrieved. This is how you download a plain file, grab an embedded video, or capture a web page as an image, PDF or HTML. Below is a full example for every engine.

engine	What it does
auto	Default. Picks the best way to fetch the resource.
file	Download the resource as a plain file.
video	Extract an embedded video from a web page.
website	Fetch the full HTML page with its embedded resources.
screenshot	Render the page and capture a screenshot (→ image).
screenshot_pdf	Render the page and capture it as a PDF.
zip	Treat the resource as an archive to download.

auto (default)

If you omit engine (or set it to auto), the API picks the best method for the URL — a plain file download for a direct file, page rendering for a web page, and so on:

"input": [{
  "type": "remote",
  "source": "https://example-files.online-convert.com/raster%20image/jpg/example.jpg",
  "engine": "auto"
}]

file

Force the URL to be downloaded as a plain file, without any page rendering or media extraction:

"input": [{
  "type": "remote",
  "source": "https://example-files.online-convert.com/document/pdf/example.pdf",
  "engine": "file"
}]

video

Download a video that is embedded in a web page, then convert it (e.g. to MP4):

{
  "input": [{
    "type": "remote",
    "source": "https://www.online-convert.com/",
    "engine": "video"
  }],
  "conversion": [{ "category": "video", "target": "mp4" }],
  "process": true
}

website

Fetch the full HTML page (with its embedded resources) — convert it to html, or onward to a document format:

{
  "input": [{
    "type": "remote",
    "source": "https://www.online-convert.com/",
    "engine": "website"
  }],
  "conversion": [{ "category": "document", "target": "html" }],
  "process": true
}

screenshot

Render the page in a browser and capture a screenshot, then convert it to an image format (png, jpg, …):

{
  "input": [{
    "type": "remote",
    "source": "https://www.online-convert.com/",
    "engine": "screenshot",
    "options": { "screen_width": 1280, "screen_height": 1024, "device_scale_factor": 1 }
  }],
  "conversion": [{ "category": "image", "target": "png" }],
  "process": true
}

Screenshot options

Option	Type	Default	Description
screen_width	integer	1440	Viewport width in pixels.
screen_height	integer	3851	Viewport height in pixels.
device_scale_factor	float	1	Pixel density — e.g. 2 doubles the captured resolution.

screenshot_pdf

Render the page and capture it as a PDF instead of an image:

{
  "input": [{
    "type": "remote",
    "source": "https://www.online-convert.com/",
    "engine": "screenshot_pdf"
  }],
  "conversion": [{ "category": "document", "target": "pdf" }],
  "process": true
}

zip

Treat the downloaded resource as a ZIP archive — useful when a URL serves an archive you want to unpack or convert its contents:

"input": [{
  "type": "remote",
  "source": "https://example-files.online-convert.com/archive/zip/example.zip",
  "engine": "zip"
}]