Interview Studio

Interview Studio is a macOS app in active development for assembling interview video clips into a new finished file from a manifest.

Right now it is focused on the assembly/export phase of that workflow: import a project folder that contains final_manifest.json, review the generated sequence and issues, tweak a few presentation details, then export a real 3840x2160 / 60 fps / HLG master movie. If you want it, it can also produce a Plex-friendly companion MP4 without changing the protected master export.

Project Status

Active development. Very incomplete.

Built primarily for my own workflow, but possibly useful if you also have a manifest-driven interview pipeline and want a Mac-native finishing tool instead of stitching everything together by hand.

This is still an early Phase 1 app. Large parts of the eventual workflow are missing, and the parts that do exist are still being actively reshaped.

Right now this should be read as an in-progress app repo, not a finished product.

If this repo starts publishing GitHub Releases, those should become the easiest way to try it. Until then, the repo is source-first.

What It Does

• Loads an interview project folder using final_manifest.json
• Persists app-specific edits in yearly_interview_studio_project.json
• Builds a deterministic render plan with cards, answer clips, overlays, and transitions
• Shows live previews plus dedicated Sequence and Issues windows
• Renders a real HDR MOV master using FFmpeg
• Optionally remuxes a Plex-friendly MP4 companion with metadata and chapters

What It Does Not Do Yet

Today, Interview Studio assumes the clips and manifest already exist.

It does not yet create source clips, ingest raw media into this project format, or author the manifest from scratch inside the app.

That broader workflow is intended for a later phase: tools to create clips, add clips, and build or extend the manifest inside the app instead of arriving with those pieces pre-generated.

Phase 1 is intentionally narrow and still incomplete:

• one person per project
• one locked export profile
• no timeline editor yet
• no clip trimming or player-style QA workflow yet

Workflow Shape

The current app is meant to sit on top of an existing clip/manifest generation pipeline rather than replace it.

The rough shape is:

1. Generate a project folder that contains final_manifest.json and the referenced media.
2. Open that folder in Interview Studio.
3. Review question grouping, issue surfacing, previews, overlays, and output settings.
4. Export the HDR master movie.
5. Optionally keep the Plex companion output if you want a library-friendly copy.

A future phase is meant to absorb more of step 1 into the app itself.

The app keeps its own sidecar state in yearly_interview_studio_project.json so presentation edits and metadata do not have to mutate the source manifest.

Current Strengths

• Deterministic Phase 1 export contract: 3840x2160, 60 fps, HEVC Main10, BT.2020, bt2020nc, HLG, MOV
• Conservative HDR handling that blocks export instead of silently falling back to SDR
• Sidecar-backed question text edits, ordering, Title Case preference, and Plex metadata
• Safer answer-to-answer audio transitions that prefer clean seams over stray speech leakage
• A real macOS app plus a CLI smoke-test path built from the same shared core

Current Limits

• macOS only
• single-person projects only
• requires an already-prepared manifest-backed project folder
• export can be slow on CPU-heavy systems, especially for card generation and SDR-to-HLG conversion
• FFmpeg / FFprobe availability still matters
• the Plex metadata path is intentionally simple and can block export until required fields are filled in or disabled

For the fuller current-state view, see docs/WHERE_WE_STAND.md.

Building And Running

Requirements:

• macOS 14 or newer
• Swift toolchain compatible with swift-tools-version: 6.0
• ffmpeg and ffprobe available on your system if you want the packaged app build script to bundle them automatically

Build the app bundle:

./script/build_and_run.sh build

That creates:

dist/Yearly Interview Studio.app

Run the app:

./script/build_and_run.sh run

Useful script modes:

./script/build_and_run.sh --verify
./script/build_and_run.sh --logs
./script/build_and_run.sh --telemetry
./script/build_and_run.sh --debug

CLI

There is also a small CLI entrypoint that renders from a project folder directly:

swift run YearlyInterviewStudioCLI /path/to/project-folder /path/to/output-root

The CLI expects the project folder to contain final_manifest.json. It prints phase progress as it renders, then emits the output paths for the finished movie, optional Plex companion, and diagnostics folder.

Repo Layout

• Sources/App - macOS app target
• Sources/Core - manifest loading, render planning, media inspection, and rendering
• Sources/CLI - CLI smoke-test entrypoint
• Tests/CoreTests - focused tests for the shared core
• script/build_and_run.sh - packaged app build/run helper
• docs/WHERE_WE_STAND.md - plain-language current state
• docs/DECISIONS.md - decision log for durable project choices

Notes On Packaging

The packaged .app is built from source-controlled version values in script/build_and_run.sh, and the build script copies in an app icon plus bundled ffmpeg / ffprobe when those tools are available on the host machine.

This means the app is currently convenient for local use, but still early as a polished distribution story.

AI Assistance

Like most of my recent projects, this one is built with heavy AI assistance using tools like Codex and Claude.

The workflow choices, guardrails, testing expectations, and project direction are still mine. The typing speed definitely is not.