do-a-rough-cut

Do a Rough Cut

Build an editable first cut from several recordings of the same spoken piece. The skill is deliberately transcript-first: it keeps the words and their source ranges visible before making irreversible editorial choices. When the user supplies the script, that wording and order become the editorial source of truth; the transcript and variation map are then used to locate and validate the matching takes rather than to ask for script approval again.

Workflow routing

Request	Workflow
Create, revise, or render a transcript-led rough cut	Workflows/RoughCut.md

Non-negotiable invariants

• Preserve source originals; work from copies or source references.
• Produce a unique-script document and a variation map before cutting.
• Match ASR to the speech: for code-mixed takes (e.g. Hinglish), use a code-mix transcriber (e.g. Sarvam saaras:v3, mode codemix; keep the API key in your environment) with utterance splits at measured pauses. A single English-only Whisper pass produces confident, badly wrong text on code-mixed audio.
• If the user supplies a script, treat its wording and order as confirmed; do not ask the user to confirm the script again. Confirm only decisions the supplied script cannot answer.
• Pause at the decision checkpoint when competing takes materially change the words, meaning, or ending. “Proceed” is a valid best-effort override.
• Treat the ordered edit manifest as the only source of timeline order. Never build an FFmpeg concat list from a filesystem glob.
• Keep selected audio and video ranges identical, cut immediately between segments, and leave handles around words when the user asks for a relaxed rough cut.
• Inspect source color metadata. Apply at most one deliberate HLG/BT.2020 → BT.709 SDR conversion, then verify the result visually.
• On GPU-less hosts, libplacebo needs an explicit software Vulkan device: -init_hw_device vulkan=vk -filter_hw_device vk; the bare filter fails device init with Found no suitable device. Keep it SW-in/SW-out: a hwupload/hwdownload wrapper can run yet silently zero the chroma planes (monochrome-green output), so verify colors via channel means, not luma stats.
• Verify the rendered MP4 itself, not only the HTML/composition preview: probe metadata, decode all video and audio, check first/last frames, and report the real output path and duration.

Supporting material

• Main procedure: Workflows/RoughCut.md
• Timeline and render contract: references/ProductionContract.md
• Deterministic concat helper: scripts/build_ordered_concat.py
• Cut-manifest verifier: scripts/validate_cut_manifest.py

Example

User: “Use these three recordings to make a rough Instagram reel. Remove repeats, show me the script variations first, then cut and render it.”
→ Transcribes each source and writes the unique script plus variation map.
→ Asks only the unresolved take/order/ending decisions.
→ After confirmation, writes an ordered manifest, creates relaxed gapless cuts, renders, and verifies the MP4.

User: “Here is the final script: [script]. Use it to make the rough cut.”
→ Saves the supplied script verbatim, marks its wording/order as confirmed, and maps each line to the best matching source range.
→ Does not ask for script approval; it asks only about a genuine non-script ambiguity or proceeds automatically when none remains.
→ Writes the ordered manifest, creates relaxed gapless cuts, renders, and verifies the MP4.