maketalk

A command-line tool to create professional video presentations with title cards and transcriptions.

Features

• Convert MOV files to MP4 with automatic dimension normalization
• Standalone EBU R128 loudness normalization for any video file
• Merge multi-part video sections
• Extract and transcribe audio using Yakety
• Generate beautiful title cards with customizable design
• Create final presentation video with title cards and content

Prerequisites

Required:

• Node.js 14+
• FFmpeg
• jq
• Chrome/Chromium (for title card generation)

Optional:

• Yakety transcribe tool for automatic transcription (or set YAKD_TRANSCRIBE_PATH environment variable)
  • Without Yakety, maketalk will generate a template for manual title editing

Installation

Install globally:

npm install -g maketalk

Or run with npx:

npx maketalk

Usage

File Naming Requirements

Important: MOV files must follow a specific naming convention:

• Format: XX-name.mov where XX is a two-digit section number
• Examples:
  • ✅ 01-introduction.mov
  • ✅ 02-main-content.mov
  • ✅ 03-conclusion.mov
  • ❌ intro.mov (missing section number)
  • ❌ todo-workflow.mov (missing section number)

Basic workflow (with Yakety transcription):

1. Place your MOV files in a directory with proper naming (see above)

2. Run the tool:

   maketalk

3. Follow the prompts to generate transcriptions and create a prompt for title generation

4. Use claude-danger with the generated prompt to create title_cards.json

5. Continue the process:

   maketalk --continue

Manual workflow (without Yakety):

1. Place your MOV files in a directory with proper naming (see above)

2. Run the tool:

   maketalk

3. The tool will generate:

   • sections.json - Information about your video sections
   • title_cards.json - Template with placeholder titles

4. Edit title_cards.json to add your own titles and descriptions

5. Continue the process:

   maketalk --continue

6. (Optional) Level the audio of the final presentation:

   maketalk --level-audio final_presentation.mp4

Resuming After Conversion

If you need to re-run the process but already have converted videos:

# This will keep your converted videos and re-do all subsequent steps
maketalk --resume-after-conversion

This is useful when:

• You want to regenerate transcriptions
• You need to create different title cards
• Something failed after the conversion step

Preview title cards:

maketalk --preview 01 "Claude Code" "The Future of Programming"

Standalone Audio Leveling:

# Level audio of any video file (in-place)
maketalk --level-audio video.mp4

Command Line Options:

• --level-audio <file>: Apply EBU R128 loudness normalization to a single file (standalone operation)
• --continue: Continue from the claude-danger step after creating title_cards.json
• --resume-after-conversion: Resume processing after MOV to MP4 conversion (keeps converted videos)
• --preview <num> <title> <desc>: Preview a title card design
• --help: Show help information

Environment Variables

• YAKD_TRANSCRIBE_PATH: Path to the Yakety transcribe binary (default: /Users/badlogic/workspaces/yakety/build/bin/transcribe)

Output

The tool creates a generated/ directory with:

• audio/: Extracted audio files
• transcriptions/: Text transcriptions
• title_cards/: Generated title card images and videos
• converted_videos/: Processed MP4 files

Final output: final_presentation.mp4

Audio Leveling

The --level-audio <file> option applies professional EBU R128 loudness normalization to any video file. This is a standalone operation that:

• Normalizes to -16 LUFS (suitable for online video platforms)
• Updates the file in-place
• Preserves video quality (video stream is copied, not re-encoded)
• Shows before/after audio level analysis

Example workflow:

# Create the presentation
maketalk

# Level the audio of the final output
maketalk --level-audio final_presentation.mp4

Note: Audio leveling requires two passes - one to analyze and one to apply normalization.

License

ISC