Turn one idea into a finished, on-brand film — in a few hours, from a chat prompt. A Claude Code skill that runs the whole pipeline for you: brand & storyboard intake → capture or generate → edit, grade & localise → deliver. No timeline app. No agency. No shoot day.
A 90-second case study, made end-to-end by the skill — including a full AI-generated trailer (keyframe → image-to-video → montage). See it →
Video Studio is a Claude Code skill: a SKILL.md + reference playbooks + scripts that teach Claude to produce and edit video end‑to‑end. You describe the film you want in plain language; the skill orchestrates the entire pipeline and only stops for two sign‑offs (the storyboard, and final approval).
It does two things, and combines them:
- 🎞️ Edit existing footage — inventory clips (local files or URLs), auto‑select the right shots by subject (it reads the frames, not just filenames), then trim, grade and cut to a polished film.
- 🤖 Full‑AI — keyframe‑first generation: build a consistent start‑frame per shot, animate it with image‑to‑video, letter it, score it, and cut it — never blind text‑to‑video.
…held to one premium quality bar the whole way. This isn't a meme‑clip generator; it's built to produce work a brand would pay for.
- From chat. No editor, no render farm, no manual export. Prompt → film.
- On‑brand by default. It adopts your existing style guide (or creates one), builds a reusable leader + outro bracket, and holds the lines you set on every film.
- A real quality bar. Crafted transitions (no hard‑cut‑by‑default), heavy readable titles with backing, one consistent grade + grain, a hook in the first 1.5s, audio levelled & ducked. It refuses to ship "technically works."
- Honest & scriptable. Proven tools glued into one pipeline —
ffmpeg,ImageMagick,nano-banana,fal.ai. No black boxes. It even improves its own playbook after every job. - Self‑checking. A tooling preflight runs before every job and stops and asks rather than silently degrading. And a one‑time doctor tells you if your machine is ready.
1. Install it — as a plugin (recommended) or a plain skill.
In Claude Code:
/plugin marketplace add RichardTheuws/video-studio
/plugin install video-studio@theuws-video
Or manually, as a user‑level skill:
git clone https://github.com/RichardTheuws/video-studio.git
bash video-studio/install.sh # copies the skill into ~/.claude/skills/video-studio/2. Check your machine is ready:
bash ~/.claude/skills/video-studio/scripts/doctor.shThe doctor reports exactly what you have, what's missing, and which mode you can run today (footage / AI / full) — with copy‑paste install commands for anything absent.
3. Add your keys (only what your mode needs) to ~/.config/video-studio/.env:
FAL_AI_KEY=... # image-to-video + AI stills (full-AI mode)
GEMINI_API_KEY=... # nano-banana keyframes (full-AI mode)
ELEVENLABS_API_KEY=... # optional: voices / SFX4. Just ask, in chat:
"Make a 60‑second launch film for our new feature. Adopt our brand from
brand/style.md. Vertical cutdown too."
Claude loads the skill, runs the preflight, walks the intake gate, shows you a storyboard to approve, then produces the film. That's it.
New to Claude Code? It's Anthropic's agentic CLI — install it,
cdinto any project, and the skill activates automatically on any video task. See claude.com/claude-code.
The doctor (skills/video-studio/scripts/doctor.sh) checks all of this for you. In short:
| Tool | For | Install | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core | ffmpeg · jq · curl |
montage, transcode, grading, audio | brew install ffmpeg jq |
| Full‑AI | nano-banana (Bun + Gemini) |
consistent keyframes / stills | see reference/tooling.md |
ImageMagick |
heavy titles & lettering | brew install imagemagick |
|
FAL_AI_KEY |
image‑to‑video (Veo / Kling) | fal.ai | |
| Footage | yt-dlp |
only to pull clips from URLs | brew install yt-dlp |
Primary platform: macOS. Most of it is portable to Linux (swap brew for your package manager).
preflight ─► INTAKE (gate) ─► STORYBOARD (your sign-off) ─► capture / generate
│
deliver + docs ◄─ localise ◄─ edit, grade & score ◄─────────┘
The intake gate is where most of the time is saved: before a single frame is produced, the studio settles the brief and the brand — does a style guide exist to adopt, or must one be created? Is there a leader/outro? Does this need a storyboard? Which shots need generated keyframes? Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake in any pipeline, so it's an explicit, non‑negotiable step.
Deep‑dive playbooks live in reference/:
tooling.md— every tool, how to check it, how to install itbrand-intake.md— the intake gate: brand adopt/create, leader/outro, storyboard, keyframe plancommercial-craft.md— the premium bar: transitions, readable titles, grade, pacing, QA checklistmodels.md— model registry (image + image‑to‑video + audio) with costs & paramsconsistency.md— consistent characters across shots (anchor reference, keyframe‑first, text‑less + lettering)montage-ffmpeg.md— montage recipes + hard‑won ffmpeg gotchasexisting-footage.md— probe, download, subject auto‑select, trim/concat/gradelandscape-from-vertical.md— reframe 9:16 ↔ 16:9 without stretchinglessons.md— a running log of production lessons
Four defaults it never ships with:
- No hard cuts by default — premium leans on crafted transitions (cross‑dissolves, dip‑to‑white, speed‑ramps, J/L‑cuts). A hard cut is a deliberate choice on the beat.
- No thin, unreadable titles — text is always heavy (700–900), large, and on backing (scrim / plate / bar). One type system.
- No flat, jumping grade — one consistent, rich grade across every shot, plus grain.
- Never "technically works" — a moving medium is judged on a dense frame‑strip and real playback, never on stray thumbnails, and one cut is validated before fanning out to languages or formats.
If this saves you a shoot day — or just makes you smile — give it a star. It's the fastest way to help other builders find it, and it's the only thanks the repo asks for.
Issues and PRs welcome — new montage recipes, model updates, platform ports, better prompts. The skill is designed to grow: every lesson goes into reference/lessons.md and the CHANGELOG.
MIT — use it, fork it, ship films with it.
Built by Theuws Consulting. Born from a game trailer that came out so good it became a studio — the story.