footage-reframing

Reframe

A vertical crop of a landscape shot keeps about a third of its width. Centred, that third is often a wall beside the speaker. So the subject's position is measured, never guessed, and the clips are cut from that measurement by a script.

Measure each source once

1. Which sources need it. A video whose shape differs from the reel's, with a person or another subject in it. A source already the reel's shape, and one with nothing to follow (a title card, a full-frame graphic, a wide shot with no subject), needs no reframe: its clips are full.
2. Reframe it. picsart_media_reframe_video with the source's Picsart-hosted url and the reel's aspect_ratio. It replies with a job receipt, followed as picsart-video-rules says. It takes minutes, so post a line first, and start it as soon as the source and the reel's shape are known. It does not need the cut.
3. Save the result verbatim, the whole reply, as reframe-<source id>.json. Never pass scene and layer_id for this: that mode refuses a trim, and every call measures again.

One reframe per source and shape, for the whole session. The result covers the source's whole length, so every clip, every re-cut and every new running order is windowed from it by the script. Measuring again for a new cut repeats minutes of work and changes nothing. Its description says whether it charges credits. If it does, it is a SPEND (picsart-video-rules): quote every source's reframe in one go.

If it fails, retry it once: it is flaky, and a later try often succeeds. If it fails again, stop and say the reframing is unavailable right now, with what is ready. Never estimate the subject's position from a description of the video, and never frame a talking person full as a stand-in.

Cut the reel

scripts/reel_cut.py builds the scene. Write its input to a file and run python3 scripts/reel_cut.py reel.json:

{
  "width": 1080, "height": 1920,
  "sources": [
    {"id": "talk", "url": "<the url you reframed>", "reframe": "reframe-talk.json"},
    {"id": "broll", "url": "<url>", "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "duration": 31.5},
    {"id": "photo", "type": "image", "url": "<url>", "width": 1600, "height": 1200}
  ],
  "clips": [
    {"source": "talk", "in": 12.0, "out": 18.5},
    {"source": "broll", "in": 3.0, "out": 6.0, "frame": "full", "dim": 0.3},
    {"source": "photo", "duration": 2.0},
    {"source": "talk", "in": 40.2, "out": 44.0}
  ]
}