3D camera captions

The After Effects move (3D camera, depth of field, text on a path, Posterize Time 15, motion blur) rebuilt as a deterministic per-frame painter for HyperFrames. One clock paints plate, matte and every glyph. Nothing is a CSS animation.

When to use / when not

• Use on a static-camera talking-head take (avatar or real), landscape, medium shot or wider, 5–20 s per piece. The words must perform in depth around the speaker.
• Do not use for plain subtitles, a moving or handheld camera (the matte and the plate transform assume a locked shot), extreme close-ups (no room behind or around the head), or a subject a person-matting model can't separate.

Requirements and side effects (complete list)

• Tools:
  • Node 22+ and the HyperFrames CLI pinned to the tested version, npx hyperframes@0.8.62 (downloads from registry.npmjs.org). Use that exact version for every command below.
  • ffmpeg on PATH.
  • Python 3 with fonttools, brotli, numpy, pillow.
• Matte: npx hyperframes@0.8.62 remove-background runs locally. On first run it downloads its person-segmentation model (~170 MB) to ~/.cache/hyperframes/.
• Render time: compositions load GSAP 3.14.2 from cdn.jsdelivr.net at preview/render time.
• Word clock: any word-level transcriber the user already runs locally. Onset accuracy matters; plain Whisper starts run late.
• Fonts: user-supplied files. Confirm the licence allows embedding.
• Hand-drawn style (optional): needs the p5-paint-animation skill installed and set up (its setup downloads pinned puppeteer, Chrome for Testing, p5 and p5.brush). build-sprites.py runs it headlessly; frames are written to that skill's out/ and removed afterwards.
• Nothing else: no credentials, no paid calls, nothing uploaded. Files are written only into the project (assets/, renders/).

Prep (once per take)

1. Portion and plate. bash scripts/prep-take.sh <take.mp4> <start_s> <dur_s> <project>/assets produces:
   • portion.mp4: the audio source.
   • plate-tall.mp4: reflect-padded 240 px each side, 480 px top, 240 px bottom, so whips, trucks and pull-backs never show an edge.
   • person.webm: the alpha matte, same frames.
   • The script then checks the plate and matte against the portion (size, frame rate, frame count) and fails on any mismatch.
2. Word clock. Word timings for the portion, in seconds from its start.
3. Fonts. Pick 2–3 roles (caption / hero / ring), then python3 scripts/font-metrics.py assets/metrics.js key=font.woff2[@wght=…,opsz=…] ….
   • A variable font must get its axes passed here AND pinned in CSS (font-variation-settings, font-optical-sizing: none). Otherwise the browser's opsz follows the size and words overlap.
4. Silhouette. Read the head box and shoulder line off the person.webm alpha before placing anything.

Build

• Copy assets/kit/{cam3d.js,tables.js,finish.js} and metrics.js into the project's assets/.
• references/worked-film.html is the complete reference film. It has two shots, a body wipe, both ring types, a fly-through, a finale and the grade; its media is not included.
• references/recipes.md holds the depth-first groups, the wrapped ring, the staircase and hand-drawn words.
• C3.init(metrics, {W, H}):
  • The lens keeps the tutorial's vertical field of view (F = 1326.1·H/1080), so tables.js applies unscaled at any width.
  • On a frame wider than 1440, add (W − 1440) / 2 to wipe.x.

Shot grammar

Pick 4–6 beats. Split each spoken clause into its own group.

Beat	Build	Rule
Whip-in punch-in	camA table (19 f from 502 px low) then a linear creep	plate S0 1.1–1.3; the frame never lands
Depth groups	2–3 caption groups per clause at D 1250 / 1500 / 2200	near = bigger with a bigger shadow; the creep and truck reveal the parallax
Hero behind	hero word in the behind layer at the plate depth, masthead-style across the head	the head hides the middle letters; ≥ 60 % stays legible; the ascender is inside the frame
Parallax truck	swing segment, tx 420	the old layout fades over 3 steps; the next layout arrives by parallax
Body wipe	the speaker's own matte, brightness(0) blur(), leading edge from wipe.x	shot A clips left of the band, shot B right; pull-out on both sides
Wrapped ring	horizontal circle IN FRONT of the speaker (centre Z 2000), 11–16° from above, turning	words enter small at the side as spoken, swing round the front, settle; lower arc flips to read upright
Fly-through	phrases at D 1500 / 2000 / 2500, camera swings between them	focus follows the phrase
Staircase finale	push segment; caption words each deeper and smaller down a diagonal	the push drives the near words apart

Rules

• Motion:
  • Text is posterized to 15 fps (its own animation and the camera it sees). Plate and matte move every frame.
  • Motion blur is 7 ghosts over half a 15-fps step. Use shutter: 0.5 on turning rings.
  • Captions lead the voice by 0.2 s, snapped to the 15-fps grid: fr(t) = 2·round((t − 0.2)·15).
  • Entries rise by ENTRY: captions 30 px, heroes 110–260 px. Ring words ease their last 30–44 px along the path. Use RING_ENTRY's overshoot only when no neighbour is seated yet.
• Depth:
  • Every group gets its own D. Plate 3000, captions 1250–2400, wrapped ring ≈ 1100–2700.
  • Depth shadow [6, 16, 0.5, 1500] scales as 1500/(D − cz).
  • DOF σ = 6.7·|D − focus|/D px at 1080 tall. Flat captions cap at 1.2 px; ring glyphs take the full blur.
• Sizes: size / rise are on-screen px at the landing camera (tland). Sprites are rendered at their on-screen size.
• Spacing:
  • Ring text always goes through ringLine (on-screen advance; type: track 1.10, gap 26–30; hand-drawn: track 1.0, gap 28).
  • A turning ring is re-laid every pose.
• Occlusion:
  • Rings draw in front of the speaker.
  • Split a word into behind/front instances (side, zSplit) only when it is MEANT to pass behind the head.
• Legibility:
  • Captions go over the dark side of the frame.
  • Text crossing skin or light clothing gets a dark halo.
  • No trailing periods on screen.
• Grade (optional): finish.js supplies curves, saturation 1.12 for skin, and grain re-rolled per frame. Put the opaque scene (plate + behind text + matte) in a filtered wrapper. Give front text the same grade with grain composited atop, so a word split behind/front stays one colour (see references/worked-film.html).

Styles

• Editorial: a condensed display serif, italic for heroes; a text serif for captions; cream plus one accent.
• Bold: heavy grotesk heroes, light captions, one saturated accent (the worked film).
• Hand-drawn: p5.brush write-on sprites from scripts/hand/build-sprites.py:
  • Each word writes itself on from its onset.
  • Rings place words whole, rotated to the tangent and scaled by depth, on a bigger, flatter ring.
  • Recipe in references/recipes.md.

Verify

1. npx hyperframes@0.8.62 check . --no-contrast. The ghost layers trip the WCAG contrast check; the whip and wipe seams are overlapping by design.
2. In the preview page, paste scripts/frame-bounds.js and run __frameBounds(0, dur).
   • It must return []: no group outside the frame for 5+ steps while visible.
3. Paste scripts/glyph-gaps.js and run __glyphGaps(t) at rest.
   • No cross-word touches.
   • Flat words measure as one box (descenders flag false positives). An italic f's overhang reads negative. Words on opposite sides of the wipe band both show.
4. Word gaps: the rendered gap between words ≈ one space advance.
5. Snapshot every beat, render with npx hyperframes@0.8.62 render . --crf 12, and check full-resolution frames per beat.

Limits

• Matte edges flicker on fine hair. The mirrored pad shows briefly during a whip.
• A speaker who fills the frame leaves little room behind: go masthead-high, or tuck behind a shoulder.
• snapshot --at shares one page, so grain does not re-roll between captures. Judge grain on a render.
• Rendering with the grade and many ghost layers costs about 2× a plain render.