Raibit-AI/social-ad-builder

Social ad builder

scripts/build_ad.py turns a shot list into two finished files. It needs only ffmpeg and ffprobe (free). Every default was earned in a scored iteration loop and blind A/B reviews:

• Hard cuts. Fades flash black at every cut.
• Dish labels on a solid pill in the brand color. Thin text over busy food is unreadable.
• The brand line on frame 0. Most people watch muted.
• A 4% zoom punch as each food shot lands.
• Light sharpening plus one warm grade, so AI clips and phone footage look like one camera.
• No audio taken from the clips, because AI video models add their own music. Sound is real room ambience if you have it, plus a soft sizzle under food.
• Loudness at -14 LUFS with a limiter, so the true peak stays under 0 dB and nothing distorts on phone speakers.
• Text inside the 4:5 safe area (y about 390 on 1920), so one master crops cleanly to the feed.

Shot list

{
 "out": "out/my-ad",
 "brand_color": "#A3192B",
 "brand_line": "Your Restaurant · Your Town",
 "ambience": "room-recording.mov",
 "shots": [
  {"file": "clips/noodle-lift.mp4", "start": 3.0, "dur": 2.0, "label": "Dan Dan Noodles"},
  {"file": "clips/mapo.mp4", "start": 0.8, "dur": 1.5, "label": "Mapo Tofu"},
  {"file": "clips/mapo-scoop.mp4", "start": 3.3, "dur": 1.5},
  {"file": "clips/dining-room.mp4", "start": 0, "dur": 1.0, "label": "Your Restaurant", "subline": "Your Town", "food": false}
 ],
 "endcard": {"bg": "#F3ECE0", "logo": "logo.png", "dur": 2.0,
  "lines": [{"text": "Your Town", "size": 58, "color": "#8B1E1E"},
            {"text": "Order pickup or reserve a table", "size": 56},
            {"text": "yoursite.com", "size": 84, "color": "#8B1E1E", "bold": true}]}
}

Run python3 scripts/build_ad.py shotlist.json. It writes out/my-ad-9x16.mp4 and out/my-ad-4x5.mp4.

Shot fields:

• start and dur are in seconds inside the clip.
• "food": false turns off the zoom punch and sizzle (for room shots).
• "keep_label": true carries a label across two shots without re-animating it.
• "subline" adds a smaller line under the label.
• "label_size" sets the label size (default 78 px). Put \n in a label for two lines. Labels and end-card lines shrink automatically to fit the frame width.
• Text can contain quotes, colons, commas and %. Emoji will not render in the label fonts, so leave them out.
• If a clip is shorter than the requested dur, the builder uses what exists and prints a note. Check those notes: a hook that ends early freezes on its last frame.

Pacing rules from winning ads (see the ad-teardown benchmarks)

• Length: a wordless food montage wins at 12-20 s. Talking or story ads run longer.
• Shot length: a cut about every 1.8 s, with the first cut by about 2 s. Shot lengths on a 0.5 s grid let any 120 BPM music track land on the cuts.
• Order: open on motion with a hand in frame. Run the food unbroken. Keep any empty-room shot to about 1 s, near the end.
• Ending: the best food shot, or a simple card with plain action words.
• Music: add it in the platform's own licensed library at upload. Don't bake in a song you don't have rights to.

Making A/B variants

Change one thing per variant (the hook shot, the hook line, the length, or the dish set) so the winner explains itself. Copy the shot list, edit one field, build again.