Twelve looks, one project

Video: final.github.mp4 · 1920x1080 · 30 fps · 24.00 s, a loop: the film in a new look every 2 s, each look named in the corner · 7.6 MB · -14.2 LUFS / -1.6 dBTP. The master final.mp4 (15.1 MB, -14.3 LUFS / -1.2 dBTP) is a release asset. Rendered with showtime 0.4.1: the template's copy is the 0.4.1 copy ("Prompt in, video out."), so new dom --look <id> makes these twelve projects again.

Contact sheet: contact-sheet.jpg, above: the frame at 1.9 s (the template's poster) of each project, with its look's id, type pair and ground.

The request#

"Show one project in each of the twelve look signatures: a contact sheet of all twelve, and a 24-second loop that changes look every 2 seconds."

Mode: quick. The project is the dom template, a launch film for a fictional product, Northwind: one claim, the product doing its verb, three features, the formats, an end card. Assumed and stated: the template as it ships at its own 15 s, with one change, below; a quiet composed bed under the loop; labels in a neutral mono so they do not belong to any look.

What a look signature is#

showtime new dom <dir> --look <id> starts a page template in one of twelve signatures: a palette, a type pair, a motion feel and a ground, picked from a curated set (showtime signature list). The same project in each:

showtime signature apply <project> <id> switches an existing project instead. Applied to a copy of the nocturne project, signature apply ... tidewater gave index.html, showtime.json and audio/mix.json byte for byte the same as new dom --look tidewater.

How the loop is built#

Each look renders only its own 2 s (a span render: 60 frames), and an EDL plays the twelve spans in order:

Inside each pass the windows mostly follow on (0.8-8.8 s, then 10.4-14.4 s), so the look changes mid-motion while the layout stays; each pass ends on the end card and the next starts on the claim. The first and fourth windows start later than the 2 s grid on the critic's word: from 0 the loop's first frame was an empty ground (from 0.5 s the headline's second line was still growing), and from 6 s "Everything stays local." settled only 0.7 s before the cut (now about 1.4 s); 2.0-2.8 s of the film plays twice, in two looks. Light and dark looks alternate as far as five light and seven dark allow (cobalt and oxblood close the second pass, both dark). The spans are silent; one composed bed (deep house at 120 BPM, a bar every 2 s) runs under all of them, so every change is on a downbeat. A pill names each look (01/12 --look nocturne, 46 px mono), drawn by tools/labels.py.

No edits: the twelve projects are what new dom --look <id> wrote. The template's sample URL is northwind.example, a name reserved so it never resolves.

Commands, in order#

showtime is skills/showtime/bin/showtime. <job> is this example's job folder.

showtime job init twelve-looks --request "Show one project in each of the twelve look signatures: ..."
for id in nocturne paperback tidewater gallery graphite sage redline blush evergreen skyline cobalt oxblood; do
  showtime new dom <job>/looks/$id --look $id --job <job>
done
cp -r <job>/looks/nocturne apply-test && showtime signature apply apply-test tidewater   # = looks/tidewater
showtime check <job>/looks/<id>                                   # each of the twelve
showtime snap <job>/looks/<id> --at 1.9 -o <job>/stills/<id>.png  # each of the twelve
python tools/contact_sheet.py <job>/stills contact-sheet.jpg
showtime render <job>/looks/nocturne --from 0.8 --to 2.8 --no-audio -o <job>/spans/01-nocturne.mp4   # a span; the other eleven as in the table
python tools/labels.py <job>/labels
showtime edit check edit/loop.json
showtime edit render edit/loop.json -o <job>/final.mp4
showtime qa <job>/final.mp4
showtime review-pack <job>
showtime deliver exports <job>/final.mp4 --targets github --max-mb 8

Timings#

On a 64-core Linux machine with no GPU:

QA summary#

• check, each of the twelve projects: PASS, 0 errors; one warning each, look_repeat (this machine's recent jobs share a type pair, a palette or the template's upbeat-tech bed: history, not a defect). The phone check passes.
• qa of the loop: PASS (0 fail, 0 warn, 1 note), -14.3 LUFS, -1.2 dBTP; on a phone speaker -17.9 LUFS, 3.6 LU under the mix. The note: qa's phone check needs a project, and an EDL render has none (each project was checked above). The first time this loop was made (on 0.4.0's template), two renders failed qa's bar and were fixed in the EDL, which is used unchanged here: the bed's intro came out 6.4 LU under its loudest section (lifted with "section_gain": {"intro": 4}), and its last hit still rang on the last frame, abrupt_end (a 1.2 s fade_out).

What the critic found#

Three rounds by a fresh critic agent, each on the pack of the render it judged (review/: findings, responses and the hearing pass per round). Every round: would post, yes; no blockers.

• Round 1 (the loop on the 2 s grid, 30 px pills): three should-fixes, all fixed. Frame 0 was the empty ground before the claim masks in; the pill that names each look was too small to read on a phone (now 46 px, more opaque); "Everything stays local." was readable for about 0.7 s (the fourth window now starts at 6.8 s).
• Round 2: all three confirmed fixed; one new should-fix, fixed: with the first window from 0.5 s, frame 0 caught "video out." still growing (the first window now starts at 0.8 s).
• Round 3: that one confirmed fixed; one should-fix waived: on frame 0, "Voiced and captioned." is still a few pixels off its baseline as it rises. A later start would push the first window further into the headline's exit; poster.jpg is the settled 0.7 s frame. Polish left: the end of the first window shows the headline wiping out before paperback brings it back, the demo cursor starts at the frame's bottom edge (5.0 s), the pill covers a card's corner at 7.9 s, and cobalt's "Northwind" fills its 1:1 card. The critic declined to judge how the composed bed sounds: it cannot listen.

What went wrong on the way#

• The first plan was each look at --duration 24, so twelve consecutive 2 s windows would cover one 24 s film. On 0.4.0, check found a 5.4 s stretch in the hero where nothing new happens (the template held its scenes longer when stretched), so the films stay at the template's 15 s and the loop takes two passes of six windows. 0.4.1 spreads the hero's beats when it gets longer, so --duration 24 no longer holds still; the loop keeps its two passes.
• On 0.4.0, render --from/--to without --job ignored -o and named its file after the window (span-2-4.mp4), and two span renders started in the same second with the same title picked the same output folder, so one failed with missing frames. 0.4.1 honours -o for a span clip: this render wrote each span straight to spans/NN-<id>.mp4, six at a time, with no clash. Renders never overwrite, though: when the four spans were made again after the critic's round, -o spans/01-nocturne.mp4 wrote 01-nocturne-2.mp4 beside the old one, and the first loop rendered from the old spans; the new ones were moved into place and the loop rendered again.

Files#

• final.github.mp4: the loop (copy under 8 MB); final.mp4: the master, a release asset; poster.jpg: 0.7 s.
• contact-sheet.jpg: the twelve looks at 1.9 s.
• edit/loop.json: the EDL (the twelve spans, muted, their labels, the composed bed, -14 LUFS).
• tools/labels.py, tools/contact_sheet.py: the label pills and the contact sheet.
• review/round-1/ to round-3/: the critic's findings, the responses and the hearing pass of each round.

The twelve projects, their spans and the labels are not committed: the commands above make them again (the projects are the dom template; new dom --look <id> writes the same files every time).

Sources and license#

• Template and looks: showtime's own dom template and look signatures (MIT); Northwind is its fictional sample product, not a real one.
• Music: composed by showtime on the rendering machine (deep-house, 120 BPM, seed 3), nothing to credit.
• Fonts: Fraunces, Inter, IBM Plex Sans, Space Grotesk, Bebas Neue, Geist, Bricolage Grotesque, Anton, Instrument Serif and Unbounded (the looks), JetBrains Mono (the labels); all SIL OFL 1.1, from the fonts showtime installs.

The project files on GitHub