Assemble an absurdist animated-explainer video ad (~38s, 9:16) from per-scene i2v clips + their measured VO windows — retime each clip to its VO, re-encode every segment to identical 30fps/libx264/yuv420p so the concat demuxer never drops frames, concat, build a REAL-product PIL end card (never AI) with a slow Ken-Burns, mix VO (loudnorm I=-14) under music (loudnorm I=-26, volume 0.62, amix normalize=0), and burn libass captions last. FREE deterministic assembly (bash-free, Python + ffmpeg + PIL); the recipe supplies the clips, VO, music, product photo, palette, and caption table and gates the paid keyframe/clip/VO/music calls to their own capabilities. Use for the absurdist-explainer format.
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Assemble an absurdist animated-explainer video ad (~38s, 9:16) from per-scene i2v clips + their measured VO windows — retime each clip to its VO, re-encode every segment to identical 30fps/libx264/yuv420p so the concat demuxer never drops frames, concat, build a REAL-product PIL end card (never AI) with a slow Ken-Burns, mix VO (loudnorm I=-14) under music (loudnorm I=-26, volume 0.62, amix normalize=0), and burn libass captions last. FREE deterministic assembly (bash-free, Python + ffmpeg + PIL); the recipe supplies the clips, VO, music, product photo, palette, and caption table and gates the paid keyframe/clip/VO/music calls to their own capabilities. Use for the absurdist-explainer format.
status
active
render-absurdist-explainer
The free, deterministic renderer for the absurdist-explainer video ad format — the
bright Pixar/Disney 3D spot where a personified villain (the problem) narrates the whole
ad in one voice, teaches the product's ownable mechanism through cartoon biology, lists
the damage, then watches its own scheme collapse when the product arrives. This
capability is the FREE assembly stage only. All generative work (nano-banana
keyframes, Seedance i2v clips, ElevenLabs VO + music) happens upstream in the recipe and
is handed to this capability as files.
It ports the validated compose recipe from two reference runs (HUM "Big Chill" cortisol
absurdism and Soteri "Eczema, the pH villain"). The recipe is deterministic — iterate the
cut for free, re-roll only the offending paid beat.
What it does (the deterministic recipe)
Per-scene retime. Each i2v clip is retimed to its measured VO window
(scale=1080:1920:force_original_aspect_ratio=increase,crop=1080:1920,fps=30,setsar=1,
then tpad=stop_mode=clone if the VO is longer than the clip, else trim).
-t
Identical re-encode. Every segment is re-encoded libx264 -crf 18 -pix_fmt yuv420p -r 30 even if already correct — a framerate mismatch makes the concat demuxer silently
drop frames.
Concat all scene segments + the end card via the concat demuxer (-c copy).
Real-product end card.build_endcard.py composites the REAL retail product photo
over the brand palette (flat, or sampled from the photo's own edge pixel) with a typeset
wordmark + claim rows + CTA pill in PIL ImageDraw.text — never an AI cartoon bottle,
never AI-rendered brand text. compose.py Ken-Burnses it 1.00 → 1.04 over the dwell.
Mix. VO bus loudnorm I=-14 TP=-1.5, music bus loudnorm I=-26 TP=-3 then
volume=0.62, amix inputs=2 duration=first normalize=0 → master lands at
-14.5..-13.5 LUFS with the music ducked under the VO.
Captions last.make_captions.py emits a libass .ass (one cue per scene, Arial 64
white / 6px outline / MarginV=330, start = scene_start + 0.08s, suppressed on the end
card). compose.py burns it as the final filter so captions sit on top.
Scripts (free — Python + ffmpeg + PIL, no bash, no paid calls)
scripts/build_endcard.py — PIL composite of the real product photo + typeset brand
layer (wordmark / product line / claim rows / accent CTA pill). Reads the same
config.json. Run this FIRST so end_card.image exists before compose.py.
scripts/make_captions.py — emits the per-scene libass .ass from the SAME scene table
compose reads, so caption windows stay in lockstep with the cut. Run before compose.py
(or point config.captions_ass at nothing to skip captions).
scripts/config.example.json — the shape of the config the recipe binds (the
brand-neutralised Soteri values as a worked reference).
Inputs (all via --config + a runtime work dir — NO hardcoded paths)
config.json carries: scenes[] (each {id, clip, target_sec, vo, caption, atempo?}
where target_sec is the measured VO window), end_card{product_image, image, dwell_sec, zoom_to, wordmark, product_line, claims[], cta, background?}, brand_palette {primary, primary_lite, accent, grey}, music_bed, music_volume (default 0.62),
atempo (compose-stage VO speed-up, default off; the reference runs used 1.3 when the VO
read slow), captions_ass, and caption_style. See config.example.json.
Craft rules (load-bearing — faithful to the source molecule)
The end card is the REAL product photo, composited — never an AI cartoon bottle.
Both reference runs shipped an AI bottle first and had to re-shoot with the real photo.
No AI-rendered brand text anywhere. Wordmark, claims, CTA, motif — all PIL
ImageDraw.text. AI draws the world + characters only.
Re-encode every segment to 30fps before concat, even if already correct, or the
concat demuxer silently drops frames.
target_sec is the MEASURED VO duration (ffprobe each VO mp3), never a planned word
count — VO drives the per-scene timing.
Mix constants are validated — VO -14 LUFS, music -26 LUFS then volume≈0.62 (Soteri)
to 0.70 (Big Chill), amix normalize=0. Master target -14.5..-13.5 LUFS,
true-peak ≤ -1.5 dBFS.
Caption start = scene_start + 0.08s, suppressed on the end card (its typeset copy
carries the message — two text layers at one spot are both unreadable).
Requires
watch (QC the final master — confirm the villain silhouette holds, the single voice
carries the whole spot, the motif lands ≥3×, no AI brand text leaked into a cartoon
background, the end card is the real product, and duration is within ±0.1s of the summed
windows). The recipe gates the paid create-image-fal (keyframes), create-video-fal
(Seedance i2v), create-vo-elevenlabs, and create-music-elevenlabs calls to their own
capabilities — this capability itself makes NO paid calls.
