Video Director (narrated motion-graphics)

Author and render narrated, voiceover-paced motion-graphics videos in a single tool call. The video director is a three-tool family built on the Phase-0 shot-sequence pipeline:

Motion graphics vs. animated footage

start_video_director, create_explainer, and create_launch_video are the motion-graphics path — kinetic typography and shapes only, never illustrated or filmed scenes (see “What Phase-1 can produce” below). If the user asks for a bare “explainer” without specifying a visual style, both the tool descriptions and the motion-director doctrine instruct the LLM to confirm the method with the user before calling any tool: motion graphics (this family — a fixed ~20 credits via create_explainer, or ~11 credits driving the Phase-0 pipeline manually) vs. animated illustrated footage (get_recipe → video-explainer, ~45 credits per 10-second block). Only proceed once the user has chosen, or has already stated a style in the original ask. See Content Recipes for the video-explainer side of this choice.

What Phase-1 can produce

Phase-1 visuals are kinetic typography, simple shapes, and image media — text, shape, and image reveal elements anchored to voiceover cues. On-screen pieces appear the moment the narration speaks their phrase, baked to the exact frame via forced alignment.

Phase-1 honest limits:

Credit costs

start_video_director

Free. Zero credits. No side effects.

create_explainer and create_launch_video

Each one-shot tool runs the full authoring and rendering pipeline. The credits are charged as four sub-jobs:

Step Job type Credits
Authoring (LLM — writes VO script + shot-sequence brief) video-director 9
Voiceover synthesis (ElevenLabs v3) text-to-speech 3
Forced alignment (ElevenLabs — word timings) forced-alignment 3
Resolve (bake cue anchors to frames) synchronous, no job 0
Remotion render render-video 5
Total per video   20

Arithmetic: 9 + 3 + 3 + 0 + 5 = 20 credits per generated video.

The authoring credit is refunded if the run fails. Each sub-job (speech, alignment, render) is metered independently and is refunded only if that step itself fails — a step that already completed is not refunded when a later step fails (e.g. if render fails, the speech + alignment credits already spent are not returned).

Automatic resolve repair: the authoring LLM occasionally produces a brief that violates a resolver invariant (e.g. two scenes with overlapping reveal timing). When that happens the director silently gives the author ONE corrective pass — feeding back the resolver’s exact error — before failing the job. The corrected brief must keep the voiceover script and cues byte-identical to the original (speech and forced alignment have already been generated from them and are not redone), so only scene/shot/reveal structure and timing may change. This repair round is free — no extra credits are charged — and is invisible when it succeeds. If the repair either drifts the script/cues or still fails the resolver, the job fails exactly as it would without the repair attempt, with the same stage-prefixed resolve: error message.

Brand

create_explainer and create_launch_video both accept an optional brand — either a preset id (see list_brand_presets, e.g. "cobalt-corporate") or an inline token object { palette, fonts, logo }. Whichever you pass, its palette and fonts are applied consistently across every scene the director authors. See Brand Typography Ramp for the full palette/font model, including the per-role weight/casing/tracking levers.

Logo image

A brand can also carry a logo:

Field Type Notes
logo.name string Required whenever logo is set. The wordmark text — used as the fallback render (see below) and in the tagline layout.
logo.tagline string Optional line shown under the wordmark/logo.
logo.image string (https URL) Optional. Must be an https URL on your Nodaro CDN — get one from request_image_upload or upload_image_widget (see Upload tools) before authoring the brief. Raster formats only (PNG, WebP, JPEG) — no SVG. A URL on any other host is rejected when the brief/plan is validated.
logo.imageBackdrop string (hex color) Optional. Renders a rounded color panel behind the logo image — useful when the logo needs contrast against the scene background. Has no effect without logo.image.

When logo.image is set, the video director guarantees a logo-assemble-lockup scene appears somewhere in the video — it’s the only blueprint that renders the logo image. You don’t need to explicitly request it: if the authored brief doesn’t already include one, the pipeline appends it automatically as a closing beat.

Fallback: if the image fails to load at render time, that scene falls back to the animated text wordmark (logo.name) instead — a bad or unreachable image URL never fails the render. The renderer retries a failing image a couple of times over a few seconds (holding the render frame each time) before giving up and falling back, so if you render immediately after uploading — before the image has finished propagating on the CDN — that render may still show the wordmark fallback even though the URL is valid. If that happens, wait briefly and render again.

Example — create_explainer with an inline brand + logo:

{
  "topic": "How our new analytics dashboard works",
  "brand": {
    "palette": { "bg": "#0B0B12", "text": "#FFFFFF", "accent": "#8B5CF6" },
    "fonts": { "heading": "Montserrat", "body": "Inter" },
    "logo": {
      "name": "NODARO",
      "image": "https://…/uploads/logo.png",
      "imageBackdrop": "#111111"
    }
  }
}

Driving the pipeline manually? resolve_shot_sequence’s brief accepts the same tokens under shotSequenceBrief.brandTokens — but only as the resolved object shape ({ palette, fonts, logo }), never a preset-id string. Call list_brand_presets first and copy a preset’s tokens in if you want to start from one.

Tool reference

start_video_director

Scope: none — always visible (no scope required, all editions).

Returns the motion-director doctrine that instructs the LLM how to:

  1. Pick a genre (explainer or product-launch) and narrative arc.
  2. Draft the VO script as discrete cue phrases.
  3. Build a ShotSequenceBrief JSON object.
  4. Drive the Phase-0 pipeline: generate_speech → forced_alignment → resolve_shot_sequence → render_shot_sequence.

Call this tool first when a user asks for a narrated video but wants to author or review the brief before committing to a render. It is idempotent, non-destructive, and free — no credits charged, no jobs created.

Input: none

Returns: The motion-director doctrine (the full authored skill, including narrative-arc table, VO script bank, shot-sequence method, motion doctrine, and the ShotSequenceBrief machine contract with a worked example).

create_explainer

Scope: workflows:execute — Cloud only.

Author and render a narrated, time-coded concept-led explainer video in one call. The director writes the VO script + shot-sequence brief, generates the voiceover, aligns it word-by-word, resolves cue anchors to exact frames, and renders an MP4 on the Remotion engine. In hosts with interactive tool cards (claude.ai), progress and the finished video render inline in the tool card. The video is also saved to your Nodaro library.

Input:

Field Type Notes
topic string (1–8000 chars) What the explainer should teach or cover. Required.
brand string | object Optional. A brand preset id or inline brand tokens — see Brand below.

Returns: { job_id: string }. Clients without card support poll get_job to track progress; when complete, the MP4 URL is in output_data.videoUrl.

Example:

{ "topic": "How transformer self-attention works, in 60 seconds" }

create_launch_video

Scope: workflows:execute — Cloud only.

Author and render a narrated product-launch video in one call. Pass brief describing the product — what it is, who it is for, the key features, the tone. The director writes the VO + brief, generates the voiceover, aligns it, and renders an MP4. In hosts with interactive tool cards (claude.ai), progress and the finished video render inline in the tool card. The video is also saved to your Nodaro library.

Input:

Field Type Notes
brief string (1–8000 chars) Describe the product to launch (features, audience, tone). Required when no url.
url string Not yet supported. Passing url without brief returns a “Real-UI capture isn’t supported yet — pass brief instead” message. Passing both (url + brief) ignores the URL and proceeds with brief.
brand string | object Optional. Same shape as create_explainer’s brand — see Brand below.

Returns: { job_id: string }. Clients without card support poll get_job to track progress.

Example:

{
  "brief": "Nodaro is an AI video studio. Paste a prompt, pick a style, get a finished video. For indie creators and small teams who don't have time to edit. Tone: confident, modern, no jargon."
}

Authoring manually with start_video_director

If you want to review or refine the brief before rendering — or if you want to learn the shot-sequence method — use start_video_director and drive the pipeline yourself. The doctrine it returns covers the full workflow:

1. Call start_video_director → read the doctrine (free)
2. Draft your voScript + ShotSequenceBrief following the doctrine
3. Call generate_speech(voScript) → wait for job → audioUrl
4. Call forced_alignment(audioUrl, voScript) → wait for job → alignment
5. Call resolve_shot_sequence(brief, audioUrl, alignment) → plan (synchronous)
6. Call render_shot_sequence(plan) → wait for job → MP4

Steps 3–6 each consume credits independently (3 + 3 + 0 + 5 = 11 credits for the four sub-jobs; no separate authoring charge when you write the brief yourself).

See Shot Sequence for the full brief format, cue-anchor rules, and element reference.