Tools Implementation: Choose What Works For You or Build Your Own

Where this sits

18:03 · 7 min

You have a text and a read. From here on, timing is not invented — it is derived from the audio. That is true in every editor named further down this page, and the last section makes it literal.

Criteria of selection

18:10 · 12 min · Berlin, 21–27 September, 16 places

The criteria describe readiness to make a film in a room in six days. They do not describe talent, and they do not rank you against each other on taste.

What each sub-point means

• Detail in the concept — a named focus object, a stated question, a stated answer. The Module 01 move: topic → document → focus.
• Storyline — the order in which the viewer receives things. Result → Question → Story → Lesson, if you use our frame. Any deliberate order counts. No order does not.
• Material gathered — files you have, verified, with sources. Not a list of what exists somewhere.

A strong idea with no images and no line cannot be made in Berlin in a week. A modest idea with forty verified images and a clear line can. That asymmetry is the whole of criterion 1.

Questions on the criteria and on the date are taken now, for eight minutes. Everything else goes to the channel or to your consultation.

What we need from you

18:30 · 10 min · shared doc

One question, in writing: what stands between you and meeting those criteria by 7 September?

Four minutes of silent writing, then we read the four sections aloud and the named tutor confirms or redirects in one sentence. No discussion here — the discussion is the consultation itself.

The consultation slot being filled tonight is the one between this module and the next: 28 August to 1 September, thirty minutes. It is in the curriculum, it is already funded, and it is the last one before the production module. Book it before you close the laptop.

Screening — the advertising reel

18:40 · 20 min · four groups, five minutes each

One Soviet film, one British-American. Advertising by definition wants to stitch things together and to convince; that makes it constructive by definition. Holding both requirements at once was the task, and how was left to each group.

What the response stays on

• Which cut asserts a causal link the footage does not carry.
• Where a shot from one film is made to stand for the other film's claim.
• Where the soundtrack does the persuading instead of the images.
• Where the group chose to leave a seam visible, and what that cost.

Running order is drawn at the start of the block, so nobody prepares to go last. At five minutes the next group plays, finished or not — what does not fit goes into your consultation.

Reflection

19:12 · 8 min

Not a fifth review. What was common to the four.

Tonight's homework added one more link to that chain, and every group felt it: advertising.

Four groups fought the same fight in four different editors. The fight was about order and about claim. The editor was almost irrelevant to it. That is the argument of the rest of this page.

The tool landscape

19:20 · 12 min

The reference is Wikipedia's Comparison of video editing software. Around twenty rows. We are not reading it — we are learning which four columns decide anything for you.

One constraint, because it changes what you do this week

CapCut is the fastest way to a finished reel and the one most of you already know. It is still not a way for us. Four reasons, heaviest first:

If you are already working in it, keep the built-in effects out of the final mix and take sound from a CC0 source — freesound.org filtered to CC0, or the Internet Archive. Note where every sound came from; the credits will need it either way.

Without a GUI — the 89 reel

19:20 · 10 min · the far end of the same spectrum

Shown in Module 03 · 2:44 · no timeline was opened at any point in making it

The only file a human writes

shots.csv — twenty rows, one per shot. It holds the single decision a machine should not make: which image stands with which sentence. Four of its rows:

Two commands

# align: reads script.md and narration.wav, writes timings
python tools/generate_shots.py --project projects/89 --lang en

# render: writes 1080×1920 H.264, with .ass and .srt beside it
python tools/render_reel.py --project projects/89

Between them there is a report to read, and it is the part worth showing. Every shot carries a confidence figure — how well the read and the script agree there — and warnings about the images:

shot 02  cue 0:06   6.06– 15.12s ( 9.06s, 272 fr)  conf 0.83
         Karlshorst-Prepared.jpg  pan_rl  max_zoom 0.96x [CLAMPED]

CLAMPED means this image does not have the pixels for the move asked of it, so the move was reduced. The image was not quietly faked bigger. That decision is the difference between a tool you can trust with an archive and one you cannot.

Narration

164.17 s, recorded human voice, passed through untouched

Output

1080×1920, 30 fps, 4925 frames, 20 shots

Alignment

stable-ts — timings computed from known text, never transcribed

Render

memoacts_core + ffmpeg with libass

Human input

one CSV of twenty rows

Re-recording

replace the wav, run the same two commands. Every boundary and every caption recomputes

What it cost

It took longer to build than the reel took to make. It pays from the second reel, and only if the reels are alike. And it does nothing that matters: finding and verifying the images, and deciding which image goes with which sentence, stayed human work from beginning to end.

Do not install it tonight. It is not the homework. It is shown so that the middle of the range looks like a choice rather than a default.

The point

19:30 · 2 min

There is a wide range of tools. You can choose one, or build your own. Neither decision makes the film. What makes it is the story you are going to tell and your picture of how it reaches the viewer. The tool is chosen after that picture exists, and it is chosen to fit it.

Homework

Due before 18:00 CEST, 2 September

1 — Settle your editor

If you have no reason to prefer anything else, keep Shotcut or try DaVinci Resolve. Confirm three things before Module 06: it opens your files, it exports 1080×1920 H.264 at 30 fps, and it imports SRT.

2 — Write the script for your own reel

The text as it will be read aloud, in the order the viewer receives it, with the images you intend for each part named beside the lines.

The script is what criterion 1 reads as detail in the concept and presence of a storyline, and it is what your consultation can work on. A cut made this week would be built on a text that is not settled yet.

3 — Upload tonight's group video

Into the shared folder, with a short document beside it listing the names of everyone in your group.