REQUIRED: Load Remotion Best Practices First

This skill depends on remotion-best-practices. You MUST invoke it before proceeding:

Invoke the skill/tool named: remotion-best-practices

Video Podcast Maker

Automated pipeline for 4K Bilibili horizontal knowledge videos from a topic. Coding agent + TTS backend + Remotion + FFmpeg.

Contents

• [Bootstrap](#bootstrap) — update check + prerequisites (run before Step 1)

• [Execution Modes](#execution-modes) — Auto vs Interactive, default decisions

• [Regenerating an Existing Video](#regenerating-an-existing-video) — reuse videos/{name}/ to iterate on a finished video

• [Workflow](#workflow) — the 15 steps + phase-file pointers + mandatory stops

• [Hard Rules](#hard-rules) — non-negotiable production constraints + output specs

• [Per-Video Layout](#per-video-layout) — directory structure, --public-dir, naming

• [Additional Resources](#additional-resources) — when to load each references/ file

• [User Preferences](#user-preferences)

• [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting)

Bootstrap

Resolve SKILL_DIR to the directory containing this SKILL.md. If your agent exposes a built-in skill directory variable (e.g. ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}), map it to SKILL_DIR.

SKILL_DIR="${SKILL_DIR:-${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}}"

# 1. Update check (notify-only, throttled to 24h)

"${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/check_update.sh"

# 2. Prerequisites (CLIs + backend env vars)

python3 "${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/check_prereqs.py"

**check_update.sh output**:

• UPDATE_AVAILABLE vX.Y.Z -> vA.B.C — tell the user the version delta and ask before running git -C "${SKILL_DIR}" pull --ff-only. Notify-only by design — never pull without consent (the skill directory belongs to the user).

• UP_TO_DATE / SKIPPED_RECENT_CHECK / MANUAL_INSTALL — continue silently.

Prereqs failures — see README.md for setup. The check is backend-aware (resolves TTS_BACKEND env → user_prefs.json global.tts.backend → edge default), so only env vars required by the active backend are validated.

Design Learning shortcut: If the user provides a reference video/image or asks to save/list/delete style profiles, see references/design-learning.md instead of running the workflow below.

Execution Modes

Detect at workflow start:

• "Make a video about..." / no special instructions → Auto Mode (default)

• "I want to control each step" / "interactive" → Interactive Mode

Auto Mode defaults

Full pipeline with sensible defaults. Mandatory stop at Step 9 (Studio review); Step 10 (4K render) only fires when the user says "render 4K" / "render final".

Override any default in the initial request:

• "make a video about AI, burn subtitles" → auto + subtitles on

• "use dark theme, AI thumbnails" → auto + dark + imagenCN

• "need screenshots" → auto + media collection enabled

Interactive Mode

Prompts at each decision point.

Regenerating an Existing Video

If videos/{name}/ already exists and the user is iterating on a finished or in-progress video — "regenerate", "re-render", "rebuild", "I edited the script/prompt", "update the video", "change the BGM" — reuse that directory. Do NOT start a new project or a new videos/{newname}/; that is the [Single Project](#hard-rules) rule applied to iteration, and starting fresh is the most common mistake here.

Pick the smallest re-run for what actually changed. Every command targets the same videos/{name}/, and every Remotion command keeps --public-dir videos/{name}/:

A script change shifts every downstream timestamp, so always regenerate timing.json through TTS — never hand-edit it (see [Audio-Master Clock](#audio-master-clock--sync)). After any re-run, re-verify:

python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/verify_output.py videos/{name}/

Cleanup only removes TTS temp files, never output.mp4 / video_with_bgm.mp4 — so BGM/subtitle re-runs avoid a full ~8-min re-render.

Workflow

Iterating on a finished video? If videos/{name}/ already exists and the user wants to regenerate after a change, do NOT start at Step 1 — see [Regenerating an Existing Video](#regenerating-an-existing-video) for the minimal re-run.

At Step 1 start, create one task per step in your agent's tracker (Claude Code TaskCreate / Codex todo list / equivalent). Mark in_progress on start, completed on finish. Files in videos/{name}/ are the durable record — if interrupted, inspect the directory to determine where to resume.

Mandatory stops (bold rows above):

• Step 9 — Studio review. MUST launch npx remotion studio and wait for user feedback before rendering. NEVER render 4K until the user explicitly confirms ("render 4K" / "render final").

• **Step 14 — verify_output.py.** MUST pass before declaring the video done. Exit 0 = green; exit 2 = warnings still publishable. Auto-fixes common omissions (creates final_video.mp4 if missing). For machine-readable output add --format json (auto when piped).

Pre-render audit (recommended) — before Step 9:

python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/audit_beat_sync.py <Video.tsx> <timing.json>

Flags beats that drift > 1.5s from narration. Especially important for kinetic-typography videos.

Validation Checkpoints

Hard Rules

Visual minimums (text sizes, content width, safe zones, animation safety) live in references/design-guide.md. MUST load before Step 9.

Audio-Master Clock & Sync

Golden rules

• Audio is the master clock. Every slide start, subtitle, progress-bar chapter, and animation beat is derived from podcast_audio.wav and podcast_audio.srt.

• Generate timing from TTS, not from text estimates. The canonical pipeline is:

podcast.txt (final)

  → generate_tts.py

  → podcast_audio.wav + podcast_audio.srt + timing.json

  → Remotion composition

  → render

• **Never hand-write timing.json before audio exists.** If you already have curated slides, run align_timing_from_srt.py to anchor them to the real SRT, or add a "section" field to each slide and then run it.

• Compensate TransitionSeries overlap. TransitionSeries renders sum(section.duration_frames) - (N-1) * transitionFrames frames. To keep the rendered length equal to timing.total_frames, scale every section proportionally; do not stuff all overlap frames into the first section. The corrected pattern is in templates/Video.tsx.

Mandatory sync checkpoints

If any checkpoint fails, stop. Do not publish.

Output Specs

Per-Video Layout

project-root/                           # Remotion project root

├── src/remotion/                       # Remotion source (Root.tsx, compositions, index.ts)

├── videos/{video-name}/                # Per-video assets (the agent's working dir)

│   ├── topic_definition.md             # Step 1

│   ├── topic_research.md               # Step 2

│   ├── podcast.txt                     # Step 4: narration script

│   ├── phonemes.json                   # Step 4.5: zh-CN pronunciation overrides

│   ├── podcast_audio.wav               # Step 8: TTS audio

│   ├── podcast_audio.srt               # Step 8: subtitles

│   ├── timing.json                     # Step 8: timeline (drives animations)

│   ├── thumbnail_*.png                 # Step 7

│   ├── output.mp4                      # Step 10: 4K render (no BGM)

│   ├── video_with_bgm.mp4              # Step 11

│   ├── final_video.mp4                 # Step 12: final output

│   └── bgm.mp3                         # Background music

└── remotion.config.ts

--public-dir per video

Remotion commands MUST use --public-dir videos/{name}/ — each video's assets stay in its own directory, no copy to public/. Enables parallel renders.

npx remotion studio src/remotion/index.ts --public-dir videos/{name}/

npx remotion render src/remotion/index.ts CompositionId videos/{name}/output.mp4 --public-dir videos/{name}/ --video-bitrate 16M

npx remotion still src/remotion/index.ts Thumbnail16x9 videos/{name}/thumbnail.png --public-dir videos/{name}/

Naming

• **Video name {video-name}**: lowercase English, hyphen-separated (e.g. reference-manager-comparison)

• **Section name {section}**: lowercase English, underscore-separated, matches [SECTION:xxx]

• Thumbnail naming (16:9 AND 4:3 both required):

Additional Resources

Load on demand — do NOT load all at once:

Script suite dispatcher

All scripts under ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/ are reachable through one hierarchical entry point:

python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/cli.py --help                  # list resources

python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/cli.py <resource> --help       # list actions

python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/cli.py <resource> <action> --help    # forwards to underlying script

python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/cli.py schema [<method>]       # JSON parameter schema

Routes: tts run|validate, verify, align, audit beats, shorts gen, design list|show|delete|add, assets init|add|list|validate, prereqs, capabilities, prefs get|migrate|backend|bgm-path, schema [<method>]. Direct script invocation (python3 scripts/<name>.py ...) keeps working — the dispatcher is additive.

User Preferences

Skill auto-learns and applies preferences. Full commands and learning details: references/troubleshooting.md.

• Storage: user_prefs.json (auto-created from user_prefs.template.json, schema in prefs_schema.json).

• Priority: Root.tsx defaults < global < topic_patterns[type] < current instructions.

• User commands: "show preferences" · "reset preferences" · "save as X default".

Troubleshooting

See references/troubleshooting.md on errors, BGM options, preference learning, design-learning issues.