Stage Generate

stage-generate

How to produce AI-generated footage and execute a bounded semantic video edit already planned by EDIT/AUTO. Designed HTML remains composition work; deterministic cutting remains stage-edit work. The generation tools are ovs image, ovs video, and ovs speak, followed by ovs edit assembly. Every billable call belongs to a signed generate segment.

Pattern A — talking-head / spokesperson

1. Character still: generate one image of the presenter / avatar with the intended look. Keep this reference image and reuse it for every shot of the same character.
2. Bring it to life: generate a video from that image (image-to-video). When the provider returns speech + built-in audio, that audio is the deliverable voice — it is lip-synced to the mouth in the clip — so keep it and do NOT synthesize a separate narration. Only when the clip comes back silent do you synthesize the narration (ovs speak) and add it as the audio track. Synthesizing a fresh TTS track over a clip that already speaks is the #1 talking-head defect: the new audio has different wording/timing/length, so the voice no longer matches the lips.
3. Polish: add captions / a lower-third / a hook by authoring a small composition (stage-compose) and overlaying it onto the clip — visual-only. Preserve the clip's own (lip-synced) audio through assembly; a captions composition must not carry a narration <audio> track that would replace the clip's voice.

Pattern B — cinematic / AI b-roll montage

1. Storyboard the shots (each: prompt, camera motion, duration).
2. Generate each shot (one ovs video call per shot; reuse a shared reference image / consistent style prompt for visual continuity). Pass the Gate-C-approved --image-urls, --ratio, --duration, --resolution, and --generate-audio values exactly; do not let provider defaults silently replace the signed plan.
3. Assemble: concatenate the shots in order, add transitions, and overlay a title / captions from a composition.

Consistency (basic — deep consistency is a separate skill)

• Within a shot: drive the clip from a reference image (image-to-video) to lock the subject.
• Across shots: reuse the same reference image / style prompt.
• Full multi-shot character consistency, Cameo (upload-a-photo-as-the-lead), and long-narrative planning live in stage-consistency.

Director judgment (generation line)

Craft calls specific to AI-generated footage, on top of the shared craft reference (video-craft):

Talking-head / spokesperson

• Understand what's said before placing overlays; time graphics to the spoken words.
• 3–6 overlays/min, varied types; keep them in speaker-safe zones — never over the face.
• Cut silences and filler; for vertical, keep subtitles low so they don't cover the face.

Cinematic / AI b-roll

• Open on a hero frame; keep a small transition palette (cut / fade-to-black / slow dissolve / restrained push-in).
• Protect earned moments — don't over-cut a held look or a deliberate silence.
• Design each shot first-frame → last-frame and let audio dynamics carry momentum (shot language: video-craft §10; identity across shots: stage-consistency).
• Frames are static snapshots, never an action in progress (video-craft §10); in motion / last-frame text, name characters by visible features, not names (the model conditions on pixels, not labels).
• Spend keyframes by how much the shot changes (cost gate). If a shot's start and end look nearly the same — a talking head, a small pose/expression change, a gentle pan — it needs only ONE keyframe and motion fills the rest (variation_type small). Only a shot that ends somewhere visually different — a new subject enters, a wide→close transition, a big camera move — needs TWO keyframes for the model to interpolate (medium / large). Don't pay to generate an end-frame you don't need.

Default scope caps (cost control — do not exceed without explicit user request)

Generated clips and images are billable hosted calls, so bound the run by default:

• Shots / clips: ≤ 6 per video.
• Characters: ≤ 3 per video.
• One aspect ratio per run.

If the brief seems to need more (a long story, many scenes, many characters), DO NOT silently fan out — state the larger count + the rough number of billable generations in the pre-generation confirmation and let the user opt in first. Treat anything above these caps as requiring explicit confirmation.

Rules

• Cost/time discipline: every generated clip is a hosted, billable, multi-second call. State the exact shot/character count in the pre-generation confirmation; never start generating before the user has approved the count.
• Audio (talking-head): a generated talking-head clip's built-in audio is lip-synced to its mouth. Treat it as the final voice: keep it through assembly and finalize. NEVER add or mux a separately-synthesized narration over a clip that already speaks — it desyncs from the lips. Synthesize narration ONLY for a silent clip, or for b-roll / off-screen voiceover where no mouth is visible.
• Brief drives params: record and pass the exact reference images, aspect ratio, per-shot duration, resolution, and audio choice to each generation call.
• One authorization, one output set: every billable segment in the approved plan must have a matching result. A retry that creates a new hosted task or output set needs fresh Gate-C authority; recovery may inspect or download an already-authorized result without asking again. Use ovs gate transition instead of inventing line-local confirmation rules.
• Semantic edit boundary: operation:"edit" requires a top-level video reference with intent:"edit", target/temporal anchors, plus edit_strategy.mode:"semantic"|"mixed". The prompt may change only may_change; protected identity/content/motion/timing/audio axes remain explicit. Never turn an edit into unconstrained regeneration.
• Partial batches: preserve completed sibling segments. A revision or failure invalidates only that shot plus downstream assembly evidence; never redispatch completed shots merely to rebuild the montage.

Boundary / non-goals

Generation-primary work uses this skill directly. EDIT/AUTO may invoke it only as executor for an approved semantic-edit segment; source analysis, preservation boundaries, and final assembly stay with the edit plan. Designed HTML goes to stage-compose and deterministic cuts/joins to stage-edit.