# Generate Footage > Build videos from stills when there is nothing to cut — narration first (ElevenLabs v3 with audio tags), then still keyframes from ANY source (AI image tools, screenshots, photos, HyperFrames-rendered HTML), animated deterministically with the animate-stills recipe (HyperFrames camera moves + GSAP atmosphere). Use when the user wants an explainer, documentary-style video, or any video built from generated or collected visuals instead of recorded footage. - Skill: `assafkip/generate-footage` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 5 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add assafkip/generate-footage` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/assafkip/generate-footage/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Web & Frontend - Author: assafkip (https://skillmd.com/u/assafkip) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/assafkip/generate-footage --- # generate-footage The plugin's other entry point. `video-use` edits footage you HAVE. This skill builds videos from footage you DON'T have yet: narration plus still keyframes, composed and animated by HyperFrames, rendered deterministically. Pipeline (proven in production; see `docs/rca/` for why the motion step is deterministic): ``` script (with v3 audio tags) → eleven_v3 narration (scripts/tts_v3.py) → transcribe (npx hyperframes transcribe narration.mp3) → lock scene windows to sentence boundaries (word-level timestamps) → STILLS FROM ANYWHERE (one keyframe per scene — see below) → animate-stills composition (recipes/04-animate-stills.md, build_scenes.py) → lint → render → motion + audio QA (scripts/motion_check.py, contact sheet) ``` ## Order matters: voice FIRST, visuals second Generate and transcribe the narration BEFORE building any composition or collecting keyframes. The spoken sentence boundaries are the scene windows. v3 reads are non-deterministic in pacing — a 120s estimate can come out 100s or 166s — so visuals built first always get re-timed. ## Voiceover — ElevenLabs v3 with audio tags `scripts/tts_v3.py` — stdlib-only, no pip deps. Key from `$ELEVENLABS_API_KEY` or the plugin's `skills/video-use/.env`. ```bash python3 scripts/tts_v3.py --probe # verify eleven_v3 + list voices python3 scripts/tts_v3.py --voice --stability 0.0 --script SCRIPT.md --out narration.mp3 ``` - Audio tags go in the script text: `[excited]`, `[whispers]`, `[softly]`, `[dramatic tone]`, `[warmly]`. v3 performs them; v2 ignores them. - Stability: `0.0` = Creative (max expressiveness), `0.5` = Natural, `1.0` = Robust. A "flat" read is fixed by lowering stability and re-tagging the script, not by louder words. - Delivery levers: CAPS on power words, `...` for dramatic pauses, contrast (drop to `[whispers]` right before a big line). - Audition 2-3 voices on the first sentence before committing. The first voice is never the pick. - v3 may paraphrase slightly. Transcribe and READ the result; regenerate if a key line drifted. ## Stills from anywhere A keyframe is just a PNG. The pipeline does not care where it came from. One still per scene, named `kf-NN.png`, listed in the scene manifest (`recipes/04-animate-stills.md` documents the schema). Sources that work: - **AI image tools** — any text-to-image tool you already have (Gemini, GPT image, Midjourney, local SD, or a hosted actor — see the optional section at the end). Generate from per-scene prompts with one locked style suffix. - **Screenshots and photos** — product UI captures, archive material, scans, real photography. The Ken Burns treatment was invented for this. - **HyperFrames-rendered HTML** — build a styled HTML frame and snapshot it; the engine produces its own stills. Craft rules that hold regardless of source: - **Lock ONE style** in DESIGN.md and apply it to every frame. Drift across frames reads as different shots once there's motion and grading. - **Verify the file type.** Some tools serve JPEGs with .png names; check magic bytes before composing (`file kf-01.png`). - **QA every frame** (read the image). One off-style frame is a regenerate, not a keep. Check for: text artifacts, watermarks, anachronisms, faces in close-up (drift risk), wrong palette. - **No named IP, no real living person's likeness** in generated frames for anything posted publicly. ## Animation — deterministic, in-repo Stills become motion with the **animate-stills recipe** (`recipes/04-animate-stills.md`): a manifest-driven HyperFrames composition applying camera language (push-ins, drifts, holds) and GSAP atmosphere (mist, rain, light shifts, vignette) over each still, scene windows locked to the transcript. `scripts/build_scenes.py` generates the scene layers from the manifest; `scripts/motion_check.py` proves real motion via pixel-diff in the rendered output. Renders identically every run, costs nothing, works offline. Requires Node >= 22 for the HyperFrames CLI. ## Captions and assembly - Captions burned in (muted autoplay on Reddit/X), phrase-level, timed from the transcript words. - White flash (0.28s) at story turns; soft crossfades elsewhere; dark vignette grade unifies stills from mixed sources and makes captions read. - Verify motion in the render: pixel-diff two frames 4s apart inside one scene (`scripts/motion_check.py` — mean gray diff > 3 = real motion). - Audio QA: `ffmpeg -af volumedetect` — documentary speech sits near -26 dB mean. ## Optional: hosted generative tools These are NOT dependencies. They are one way among several to source stills or clips, and they can disappear without notice — plan accordingly. - Apify text-to-image actors (e.g. `akash9078/ai-image-generator`, ~$0.01/image) worked well for batch keyframe generation. Watch for silent failures (`ok:true` with a null URL) and mislabeled file types. - Hosted image-to-video actors are where this pipeline previously kept its motion step. On 2026-06-11 the actor `danitn11/wan22-lightning-image-to-video` (2 total users) died upstream mid-production and every run failed instantly; the full analysis is in `docs/rca/rca-generate-footage-animation-2026-06-11.md`. Generative image-to-video now lives in a separate companion repo with a pluggable BYO-key backend; this plugin's motion step is deterministic and local.