Song to script

song-to-script

Turn a song into <project>/script.md — a sequence of ## Scene N blocks whose duration: values sum to the track length and whose cut points land on real section boundaries. Consumed by /video:from-song, then handed to scene-expander and video-director. Never invents timing — every boundary comes from the audio probe, and the probe's method tells this skill how musical (or not) those boundaries actually are.

When to use

• A music-video run needs scenes cut to the song (/video:from-song).
• An existing script must be re-timed to a track after the edit drifted from the beat (the named second consumer — re-time without a full re-author).

Do NOT use when:

• The operator already supplies a ## Scene N script with duration: values — feed it straight to scene-expander.
• There is no audio — use the operator brief with scene-expander directly.

Inputs

• Audio analysis — adapter-first, probe as the floor:
  • Analysis adapter (when an audio-analysis provider is configured — see audio-adapter-contract.md): {bpm, beats, downbeats, sections:[{start,end,label,energy?}]} — real musical structure. Beats/downbeats become the candidate cut grid; section labels are musical (verse, chorus, …).
  • Audio probe — JSON from scripts/ai-video/lib/probe-audio.sh: {duration, method, warning?, sections:[{start,end,energy,label}]}.
    • method: silence — boundaries are real quiet gaps; trust them as cuts.
    • method: rms — boundaries are energy-delta inflections; usable but coarse.
    • method: interval — the track is structurally flat (brick-walled / sustained); sections are fixed-interval, NOT musical. When method is interval (or warning is set), the emitted script header states that timing is interval-based and the operator should pass --scene-durations for musical sync. Never present interval cuts as beat-synced.
• Model capabilities — the chosen video model's renderable envelope from the multiplexer manifest: scripts/ai-video/adapters/<provider>.sh capability --model <id> → {min_duration, max_duration, audio_sync, aspect, verified}. Scene durations MUST land inside [min_duration, max_duration]; a verified: false manifest entry is surfaced in the report, never trusted silently.
• Mode — brief (operator text is the creative source) or auto (infer mood + action from energy).
• Brief (brief mode only) — free text: story, settings, look.
• Character lock (optional) — <project>/character.json if a human subject was locked. Absent is normal — abstract / landscape / visualiser videos have no locked subject; see Step 2.

Procedure

Step 1: Map sections → scenes (capability-clamped, beat-aligned)

One ## Scene N per analysis section. duration: = end - start (rounded to 0.5 s). Then clamp the plan to the chosen model's renderable envelope — read min_duration / max_duration from the model-capabilities manifest (<provider>.sh capability --model <id>), falling back to the provider tuning for single-model adapters:

• Section shorter than min_duration → merge into its neighbour. With beat data, merge toward the neighbour that keeps the joined cut on a downbeat (else any beat); without beat data, merge into the shorter neighbour.
• Section longer than max_duration → split into sub-scenes. With beat data, place every split point on the nearest downbeat (else beat) to the equal-division point — never mid-beat; without beat data, split equally.
• No valid plan exists (e.g. the whole song is shorter than min_duration, or a section cannot be split onto any beat inside the envelope) → halt and surface the conflict with the model id and the violated bound — an unbuildable plan never reaches the renderer.

Every emitted scene satisfies min_duration ≤ duration ≤ max_duration. When the manifest entry is verified: false, say so in the report — the envelope is documented-best-effort, not a smoke-traced fact.

Step 2: Assign mood + action

First decide the subject mode:

• Character mode — character.json exists: every scene's action: names the locked subject, never a fresh description.
• Style mode — no character.json: scenes describe setting, palette, and motion continuity (the recurring look), not a person. This is the valid abstract / landscape / visualiser path — do not invent a human subject to fill the slot.

Then pick the prompt source per segment — the modality switch:

• Lyric segment (the vocal map places ≥1 transcribed line inside it) → the scene prompt derives from the lyric line itself: its imagery, subjects, and verbs seed mood: + action: (in character mode, acted by the locked subject; in style mode, rendered as setting / weather / palette — never an invented human). The line lands in dialogue: per Step 3.
• Instrumental segment (no vocal-map line) → the scene prompt derives from the audio features: section label + energy via the intent table below. Never recycle a lyric from another segment into an instrumental one.

Then assign per scene:

• Brief mode — distribute the brief's beats across scenes in order; the modality switch still applies (lyric segments quote the brief's matching beat through the lyric's lens), and energy modulates pacing. Do not add story the brief did not state.

• Auto mode — derive mood per section from energy and label (probe labels and musical labels from the analysis adapter both map):

  label / energy	default scene intent
  intro / low	establishing wide, slow camera, calm subject/scene
  verse / mid	narrative motion, medium framing, follow the subject
  build / rising	approach, tightening framing
  chorus · drop / peak	dynamic motion, weather/FX, fast push
  bridge · breakdown / dip	close-up / detail, quiet, single light source
  outro / fade	pull-back, resolve, hold

Energy → cut frequency + motion intensity. Section energy (0..1, relative to the track mean) drives both how often the edit cuts and how hard the camera moves — chorus = faster cuts / more motion:

energy vs. track mean	cut length target	camera: motion intensity
≥ mean + 0.10 (chorus / drop)	short — split the section toward min_duration, one scene per 1–2 downbeat bars	fast push / whip / handheld shake
within ±0.10 of mean (verse / build)	medium — one scene per section or per 4-bar phrase	steady dolly, slow tighten
≤ mean − 0.10 (breakdown / outro)	long — merge toward max_duration, hold shots	locked-off or slow drift

High-energy splitting and low-energy merging both stay inside the Step 1 capability envelope and land on downbeats — the energy table chooses where inside the envelope a scene length falls, never outside it.

Step 3: Vocal map — transcribe, never guess (vocal tracks)

LYRIC TIMING AND SINGER COME FROM THE TRANSCRIBED AUDIO, NEVER FROM A
BRIEF / STORY SKELETON OR A GUESSED STRETCH. NEVER PUT ONE SINGER'S
LINE ON ANOTHER SINGER'S SCENE.

When the track has vocals and the run intends lip-sync, build a vocal map from the real audio before assigning any dialogue::

1. Transcribe the audio to timestamped lines. Adapter-first: a configured lyrics provider (e.g. audio-adapters/whisperx.sh) returns word-level timestamps plus per-line diarization labels (SPEAKER_00, …, or "?" when ambiguous):

   echo '{"audio_path":"<vocal-stem-or-song>"}' \
     | scripts/ai-video/audio-adapters/whisperx.sh analyze
   

   No lyrics provider configured → OpenAI /v1/audio/transcriptions (response_format=verbose_json → segments[].{start,end,text}) or local whisper as before (no speaker labels — every line starts as "?"). Either way the transcript is the only source of lyric timing.
2. Label the singer per line — map diarization labels (or unlabeled lines) to cast names via the operator's who-sings reference (a roster, a brief that names who sings which line, or a character cast): one diarization label ↦ one cast name, consistently. If a line's singer is genuinely ambiguous (label "?", mixed-speaker line, or no roster match), keep singer: "?" and surface it — never guess a singer to fill the slot.
3. Emit <project>/vocal-map.json: [{start, end, text, singer}], timing verbatim from the transcript.
4. Validate — run the ground-truth enforcer before handing the map to the sign-off gate:

   scripts/ai-video/lib/validate-vocal-map.sh <project>/vocal-map.json \
     <project>/transcript.json --roster "<cast names>"
   

   It rejects re-timed lines, lyrics not in the transcript, and missing singers (exit 7, specific line named). A red validator is a halt — fix the map, never bypass.
5. Place lines into the matching scene's dialogue: block using the transcript timing, tagged with the singer (singer: "<line>"). A scene's lip-sync subject MUST be the line's labelled singer; a "?" line gets NO lip-sync scene until the operator resolves it.

No vocals / no transcript / no lip-sync intent → leave dialogue: empty; the scene is performance / B-roll. Never fabricate lyrics, never re-time a line off the brief, and in style mode dialogue: stays empty (lip-sync needs a character subject). The /video:from-song sign-off gate (its Step 6) shows this map for approval before any render.

Step 4: Emit + reconcile

Write <project>/script.md (and <project>/vocal-map.json when the track has vocals). Report the delta, the section→scene map, the probe method (so the operator sees whether cuts are silence-derived, energy-derived, or interval-fallback), and whether lyric timing is transcript-derived (it must be — never brief-derived). If the sum cannot be reconciled (e.g. provider max-duration forces more time than the song has), halt and surface the conflict — do not pad silently.

Step 5: Validate before handoff

Concrete checks (all must pass before the script is handed to scene-expander):

• Assert Σ(duration) == probe.duration within ±1.0 s; report the exact delta. A larger delta → halt, do not pad.
• Verify every scene boundary equals a probe section boundary (or a --scene-durations value) — no invented cut points.
• Confirm no scene duration: exceeds the model's max_duration or falls below min_duration (model-capabilities manifest, or the provider tuning for single-model adapters).
• Verify every lyric-segment scene derives its prompt from its own vocal-map line and every instrumental scene from audio features — no cross-segment lyric recycling (modality switch).
• Ensure every ## Scene N carries all five keys (duration · mood · action · camera · dialogue), and that dialogue: is empty in style mode.

Output format

1. script.md opens with the derivation header — # <project> — derived from <song-file> (<mode> mode · cuts: <method>) — so the probe method stays visible downstream.
2. One ## Scene N block per cut carrying exactly the keys duration · mood · action · camera · dialogue — scene-expander consumes this verbatim; keep the keys exact.
3. dialogue: stays empty unless operator-supplied lyrics cover the section — detected vocal energy alone never fills it.

# <project> — derived from <song-file> (<mode> mode · cuts: <method>)

## Scene 1
duration: 6.0
mood: establishing, cold, pre-storm
action: <subject from character.json, OR style description in style mode>
camera: slow push-in
dialogue:

## Scene 2
duration: 4.5
mood: build, rising tension
action: close on <subject / detail>, wind picking up
camera: handheld tighten
dialogue:
  - "<subject>: \"<lyric line for this section, if any>\""

Gotcha

• method: interval is the brick-walled-master signal, not a bug. A compressed modern master has near-constant RMS and no silence, so the probe degrades to fixed intervals. That is the honest floor — surface it and point the operator at --scene-durations; never dress interval cuts up as beat-synced.
• A vocal section without supplied lyrics is B-roll, not lip-sync. Detected vocal energy alone does not authorise dialogue: — only operator-supplied lyrics do.
• Style mode is the default for a no-character run, not an error path. Landscape / abstract / visualiser videos never get a fabricated human subject.

Do NOT

• Do NOT invent timing. Every cut maps to a probe boundary or a --scene-durations value — never to taste.
• Do NOT present interval-fallback cuts as beat-synced. Always surface the probe method.
• Do NOT emit a clip outside the provider's min/max duration — split/merge in Step 1 instead.
• Do NOT fabricate lyrics or story beyond the brief / detected vocals.
• Do NOT invent a human subject in style mode; defer identity to character.json only when a lock exists.
• Do NOT pad a unreconcilable timing sum — halt and surface it.

See also

• /video:from-song — the command that drives this skill
• scene-expander — consumes the emitted script
• character-consistency — supplies the locked subject referenced in action: (character mode only)