[Windows] #3379's windowsHide fix landed in engine only — studio-server, lint and cli still spawn console binaries unhidden (fires during preview/Studio, not just render)

[BenT034]

Describe the bug

Follow-up to #3379 (ffmpeg console windows, fixed) — the fix landed in packages/engine only. Console-subsystem binaries are still spawned without windowsHide: true from studio-server, lint and several cli paths, so on Windows console windows still pop up. Distinct from #3476 (detached: true spawns of Node itself) and #3430 (chrome-headless-shell).

The practical difference from #3379: those were render-time. These fire during ordinary Studio use. previewLifecycle starts the preview server with detached: true, so that server has no console of its own. Every console-subsystem child it spawns therefore gets a brand-new visible console window from Windows for the duration of the call — an ffprobe flash of ~100–400 ms, a waveform or proxy encode for seconds. Scrubbing a timeline or opening the colour-grading panel is enough to trigger it.

packages/engine/src/utils/runFfmpeg.ts already carries the explanatory comment after #3379:

windowsHide: ffmpeg/ffprobe are console-subsystem binaries, so without this Node opens a visible console window per spawn on Windows.

That reasoning applies verbatim to the sites below.

Root cause

Verified by reading the shipped bundle of 0.8.15 (node_modules/hyperframes/dist/cli.js) — none of these pass windowsHide:

dist/cli.js	spawns	options actually passed
:68030	execFileP(getFfmpegBinary(), ["-hide_banner","-filters"])	{ maxBuffer, timeout }
:102626	spawn(ffmpegPath, ["-hide_banner","-filters"])	{ stdio }
:100507	execFileSync("taskkill", …) — inside a process.platform === "win32" branch	{ stdio, timeout }
:100542	execFileSync("powershell.exe", ["-NoProfile","-NonInteractive","-Command", …]) — win32-only branch	{ encoding, timeout }
:100571	execFileSync("powershell.exe", …) — win32-only branch	{ encoding, timeout }

The two powershell.exe calls and the taskkill call sit behind explicit process.platform === "win32" guards, i.e. they exist only to run on Windows, and still omit the one option that matters there. getProcessIdentity/getParentPid run one PowerShell per ancestry hop, so a single hyperframes preview --status / --list / --stop spawns several.

Corresponding sources (paths from a main checkout):

• packages/studio-server/src/helpers/mediaMetadata.ts — execFile(ffprobe, …); called on preview-HTML build and by GET /api/projects/:id/media/metadata, which is uncached (one ffprobe per request) and is hit by the colour-grading panel
• packages/studio-server/src/helpers/waveform.ts — spawn(ffmpeg, …) for audio peaks
• packages/studio-server/src/helpers/proxyTranscoder.ts — the -filters HDR probe and the proxy transcode
• packages/studio-server/src/helpers/mediaValidation.ts — spawnSync("ffprobe", …) on upload, no options at all
• packages/lint/src/hevcPreviewLint.ts — one ffprobe per video asset, per lint run
• packages/cli/src/utils/orphanCleanup.ts — taskkill, powershell.exe ×2
• packages/cli/src/browser/manager.ts — execSync("where chrome") → cmd.exe
• packages/cli/src/capture/captureCompositionFrame.ts — spawn(ffmpegPath, args) with no options object
• packages/cli/src/background-removal/pipeline.ts, packages/cli/src/browser/ffmpeg.ts, packages/cli/src/utils/webmAlphaCheck.ts, packages/cli/src/browser/preflight.ts

Steps to reproduce

1. On Windows, in any project with a video asset: npx hyperframes preview --background
2. Open the Studio, scrub the timeline, open the colour-grading panel
3. Watch the desktop — console windows flash open and closed
4. Also visible with just npx hyperframes preview --status (PowerShell spawns from orphanCleanup)

Expected behavior

No visible console windows during preview/Studio use, matching the post-#3379 behaviour of render.

Actual behavior

Console windows flash open and closed repeatedly while the Studio is open, and on every preview --status/--list/--stop.

Suggested fix

Add windowsHide: true at each site (a no-op on macOS/Linux, so it can be applied unconditionally). For the calls that pass no options object at all, add one.

It may be worth adding a lint rule or a shared spawnHidden() helper so this class of regression stops recurring — this is now the third issue in the same family (#3379, #3476, this one).

Two smaller things noticed while tracing, mentioned only because they are in the same code paths and not filed separately:

• routes/preview.ts calls probeAssetCodec(file) per ?hf-proxy= asset request, deliberately before the 304 shortcut, and routes/media.ts GET …/media/metadata has no cache — both are uncapped ffprobe-per-request paths.
• packages/cli/src/utils/autoUpdate.ts passes detached: true and windowsHide: true, which is the combination Windows resolves in favour of DETACHED_PROCESS (documented: CREATE_NO_WINDOW is ignored when DETACHED_PROCESS is set). Same conflict as [Windows] chrome-headless-shell.exe opens a visible console window on every render #3430's root cause, so the windowsHide there is not doing what it looks like it does.

Environment

Version          0.8.15 (latest)
Node.js          v22.23.2 and v24.19.0 (win32 x64) — reproduced on both
OS               Windows 11 Home 10.0.26200
CPU              AMD Ryzen 7 5700U
FFmpeg           9.0 (Gyan build, winget)