Wrapped Video

Wrapped Video

Build a "Spotify Wrapped"-style recap: take a row of data about one person (or account, team, year) and turn it into a punchy, shareable vertical video. The core idea is one template × a data table → many personalized videos. Write the template once, then render a unique film for every row.

When to use

• Year-in-review / "your 2026 wrapped" recaps for any product with per-user stats.
• Personalized data videos: fitness year, reading year, spending recap, gaming stats, sales rep recap, student progress.
• Any time the deliverable is "the same video, but with each person's numbers" — at 1 or 100,000 copies.

This is a data → share-bait pattern, not a hand-edited film. If there is no data table (or no per-record data), use a different skill.

The two non-negotiables

1. Data drives everything. Every headline, number, name, and color comes from props, never hardcoded. A scene that can't be filled from a data row does not belong in a Wrapped.
2. Built to be screenshotted. Each scene must read in under 2 seconds and look good frozen — that frozen frame is what gets shared to a story. Design for the pause, not the play.

The Wrapped scene grammar

A Wrapped is a fixed sequence of short scene types, each ~2.5–4s. Pick 5–7 and order them as a build. Same grammar every year; only the data and palette change.

Order as a crescendo: small context first, biggest/most personal stat as the climax, then the still share card. See references/scene-grammar.md for a full 7-scene storyboard with timings.

The recap story arc

The scene grammar is the skeleton; the arc is what makes a Wrapped feel like a gift instead of a dashboard. A recap is a tiny five-beat drama about one viewer — sequence it so each reveal feels bigger and more personal than the last.

Sequence stats for rising impact — smallest first, biggest last. Rank every stat by emotional payload (raw size, rarity, how flattering) and play them in ascending order. Never open on the hero number: there's nowhere to climb after it, and the rest of the film feels like a comedown. Hold the climax stat largest and longest; everything before it is set-up.

The hook is "this is about YOU." A Wrapped wins because the viewer is the protagonist. Earn that in the first 2 seconds: lead with their name, use their per-user accent, and write every line in second person ("You listened to 412 artists"). Generic copy ("Top genre: Indie") breaks the spell — reframe as "You're an Indie kind of person." If a frame would read identically for two different users, it isn't pulling its weight.

Design the final share-frame as the destination. The whole arc exists to deliver a poster worth posting. The outro is not a credits roll — it's the payoff: the headline superlative or hero number restated, name + @handle, logo, one short CTA, holding completely still ≥2s so a screenshot or auto-loop lands clean. Decide this frame first and build the crescendo toward it. Copywriting tiers and the full storyboard are in references/scene-grammar.md.

Data → video shape

Define a typed schema for one record. The whole video is a pure function of it.

// src/schema.ts
import { z } from "zod";
export const wrappedSchema = z.object({
  name: z.string(),
  year: z.number(),
  minutesListened: z.number(),
  topArtists: z.array(z.object({ rank: z.number(), label: z.string(), value: z.number() })),
  topGenre: z.string(),
  percentile: z.number(), // 0–100, "top X%"
  accent: z.string(),     // per-user palette, e.g. "#1DB954"
});
export type Wrapped = z.infer<typeof wrappedSchema>;

Register it as defaultProps + schema on the composition so each render just swaps props.

// src/Root.tsx
import { Composition } from "remotion";
import { Wrapped as Recap } from "./Wrapped";
import { wrappedSchema } from "./schema";

export const Root = () => (
  <Composition
    id="Wrapped"
    component={Recap}
    schema={wrappedSchema}
    durationInFrames={30 * 22}  // 22s @ 30fps
    fps={30}
    width={1080} height={1920}  // 9:16 vertical — the share format
    defaultProps={{ name: "Sam", year: 2026, minutesListened: 41203,
      topArtists: [{ rank: 1, label: "Phoebe Bridgers", value: 312 }],
      topGenre: "Indie", percentile: 3, accent: "#1DB954" }}
  />
);

The signature move: the big-number counter

The count-up is the heartbeat of every Wrapped. Drive it from useCurrentFrame() (never setState/setInterval — that flickers on render), ease it with a spring, and format with toLocaleString().

import { useCurrentFrame, useVideoConfig, spring, interpolate } from "remotion";

export const BigNumber: React.FC<{ value: number; label: string; accent: string }> =
({ value, label, accent }) => {
  const frame = useCurrentFrame();
  const { fps } = useVideoConfig();
  const progress = spring({ frame, fps, config: { damping: 200 } }); // 0→1, settles
  const shown = Math.round(interpolate(progress, [0, 1], [0, value]));
  const pop = interpolate(progress, [0, 1], [0.6, 1]); // overshoot-free scale-in
  return (
    <div style={{ display: "flex", flexDirection: "column", alignItems: "center",
        justifyContent: "center", height: "100%", transform: `scale(${pop})` }}>
      <span style={{ fontSize: 220, fontWeight: 900, color: accent, lineHeight: 1,
          fontVariantNumeric: "tabular-nums" }}>{shown.toLocaleString()}</span>
      <span style={{ fontSize: 48, color: "#fff", marginTop: 24 }}>{label}</span>
    </div>
  );
};

Use tabular-nums so digits don't jitter width as they roll. For the top-X list, reuse one spring per item with a staggered delay (rank 1 first) — see references/remotion-recipes.md.

Vertical 9:16, designed for the pause

Render 1080×1920. Stories/Reels/TikTok crop and overlay UI, so keep all type and key numbers inside the center 80% height, clear of the top 12% and bottom 18%. One bold idea per frame, oversized type, high-contrast accent on a flat/gradient background. Per-user accent color makes each share feel personal. Full safe-area map in references/scene-grammar.md.

Batch: one template → many videos

The payoff. Render every data row to its own MP4 with renderMedia, passing the row as inputProps. Generate a CSV of jobs, loop, name files per record.

// render-all.ts  — run with: npx tsx render-all.ts
import { bundle } from "@remotion/bundler";
import { renderMedia, selectComposition } from "@remotion/renderer";
import { wrappedSchema } from "./src/schema";
import users from "./users.json"; // array of rows matching the schema

const serveUrl = await bundle({ entryPoint: "./src/index.ts" });
for (const user of users) {
  const props = wrappedSchema.parse(user);            // validate the row
  const comp = await selectComposition({ serveUrl, id: "Wrapped", inputProps: props });
  await renderMedia({
    composition: comp, serveUrl, codec: "h264",
    inputProps: props,
    outputLocation: `out/wrapped-${user.id}.mp4`,
  });
  console.log("rendered", user.id);
}

For thousands of rows, fan out across machines/Lambda and dedupe identical prop sets. Pipeline, scaling, and a Node + CLI batch variant are in references/batch-pipeline.md.

Build checklist

• Every visible string/number comes from props; nothing hardcoded.
• 5–7 scenes, crescendo order, biggest/most personal stat as the climax.
• Numbers count up via useCurrentFrame + spring, tabular-nums, locale-formatted.
• 9:16 1080×1920; key content in center 80%, clear of top 12% / bottom 18%.
• Each scene reads in <2s and looks good frozen (it will be screenshotted).
• One schema validates every row before render; batch script names files per record.

Deliver & verify (rendered stills → MP4)

Packaged helper (scripts/): tile your stills with scripts/contact-sheet.sh sheet.png f-hook.png f-mid.png f-end.png, then assert the encode with scripts/probe-mp4.sh out.mp4 [WxH] [fps]. See scripts/README.md.

A Wrapped is a Remotion composition rendered per data row — frame-deterministic, so any exact frame renders headlessly with no seek harness. The deliverable is an MP4 (often many) carrying each person's exact numbers; verify one representative row by stills before you batch.

Output contract:

• A Remotion project with the composition registered (<Composition> + zod schema + defaultProps), all motion frame-driven (no timers / Date.now() / Math.random() — count-ups via useCurrentFrame + spring).
• Deliverable = the rendered out/wrapped-*.mp4 per row (plus the project, so any row re-renders).
• Per-user stats baked into props and validated by the schema before render; 9:16 1080×1920.
• Duration data-dependent? compute it in calculateMetadata, not by hand.

Verify loop — stills of ONE row → inspect → batch. Render a representative user's frames first (cheap, no encode); catch a layout/data bug once instead of N times.

# Frame-exact stills at start / mid / end for ONE representative row — pass that row as props
npx remotion still Wrapped out/f-start.png --frame=0   --props='{...one user...}'
npx remotion still Wrapped out/f-mid.png   --frame=N   --props='{...one user...}'
npx remotion still Wrapped out/f-end.png   --frame=L   --props='{...one user...}'   # L = durationInFrames - 1

# Inspect: every visible string/number comes from that row and is EXACT (big-number reveal lands on the
# real value, top-X ranks/labels correct); key content inside center 80%, clear of top 12% / bottom 18%.

# Only after the representative stills check out, batch-render every row:
npx tsx render-all.ts

• npx remotion compositions reads durationInFrames/fps to pick the end frame and the big-number's settle frame.
• README demo GIF for free: npx remotion render Wrapped out/demo.gif --codec=gif --props='{...}'.

Before you finish:

1. npx remotion still renders cleanly at frame 0, mid, and last for the representative row — no errors, no missing assets/fonts.
2. Big-number reveal lands on the EXACT prop value at its settle frame; top-X ranks/labels/values match the row.
3. 9:16: key numbers/type inside center 80%, clear of top 12% / bottom 18%; each checked frame reads frozen.
4. Frame-driven only — no Date.now() / Math.random() / timers; schema validates every row before batch.
5. Representative MP4 encoded and plays; then batch all rows (file per record); (optional) GIF for the README.

Reference files

• references/scene-grammar.md — full 7-scene storyboard with frame timings, the build/crescendo logic, superlative & percentile copywriting patterns, and the 9:16 safe-area map.
• references/remotion-recipes.md — runnable scene components: staggered top-X list, percentile bar, scene sequencing with <Series>, transitions, fonts, and the no-flicker animation rules.
• references/batch-pipeline.md — CSV/JSON → many MP4s: schema validation, the render loop, concurrency, Lambda fan-out, and file naming.