| name | remotion-overlay-composite |
| description | Render Remotion captions and motion components as a transparent overlay and composite them over a locked video base. Use when adding on-screen components, avoiding Remotion flicker, or keeping iPhone SDR color stable. |
Remotion Overlay Composite
Use this skill when adding captions, logos, prompt modals, transitions, and other Remotion components to a locked edit.
Why
Do not repeatedly render the full iPhone video through Remotion just to check overlay placement. That has caused black flickers, repeated frames, and yellow-green color shifts. Lock the base video first, render a transparent overlay, then composite.
Workflow
- Normalize raw iPhone footage to SDR and build the locked visual base.
- Put captions and overlays in a caption config such as
series/days/05-caption-overlay-only-v1.json.
- Render overlay-only with alpha.
- Composite that overlay over the locked base video with FFmpeg.
- Add SFX/music/voice as a separate audio pass when possible.
Render Overlay
python3 pipeline/caption.py \
--config series/days/05-caption-overlay-only-v1.json \
--muted
Composite Overlay
ffmpeg -y \
-i edits/day_05/canonical/day_05_visual_base_sdr_cleanvoice_audio_v1.mp4 \
-i edits/day_05/canonical/day_05_overlay_only_prores4444.mov \
-filter_complex "[0:v][1:v]overlay=0:0:format=auto[v]" \
-map "[v]" -map 0:a \
-c:v libx264 -crf 16 -preset slow \
-c:a copy -movflags +faststart \
edits/day_05/day_05_captioned.mp4
Components To Prefer
floating_image_pop for logos and single visual icons.claude_prompt_modal for replacing raw Claude screen recordings.image_swipe_away for wiping a frame upward into the next clip.finger_stretch_words for tracked hand/body typography.
Taste Rules
- If a large logo appears, do not also duplicate the logo's name as a caption.
- Put captions near the animation they describe. For Claude modals, place captions under the modal.
- Use one to three words on screen for regular captions.
- Let captions linger until right before the next caption starts.
- Check stills first, short windows second, and full renders last.
References
See references/config.md for Day 5 overlay snippets.
