Quickstart

Build the engine

Vawe is a Go binary that drives headless Chrome and ffmpeg. You need Go, a Chrome or Chromium install, and ffmpeg on your path.

make build
# downloads the free fonts, then: go build -o bin/vawe ./cmd/render

This produces bin/vawe. The make build step also runs make fonts, which pulls the typefaces into assets/fonts/ (they are fetched, never committed).

Render the sample

make list                        # show the scene module + its schema and sample
./bin/vawe formats/scene/sample.json
# → out/sample.mp4

Or through make, which is the same thing with a friendlier name:

make video D=formats/scene/sample.json

Add --draft for a fast render with no film grain while you iterate:

./bin/vawe formats/scene/sample.json --draft

Write your first scene

Every scene is a JSON file that starts with "module": "scene". Save new videos as formats/scene/<topic>.json. Here is a complete, minimal one:

{
  "module": "scene",
  "orientation": "landscape",
  "theme": "vawe",
  "duration": 4,
  "audio": { "silent": true },
  "layers": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "One JSON, <b>one video.</b>",
      "size": 120,
      "pin": "center",
      "split": "word",
      "preset": "up",
      "each": 0.4,
      "stagger": 0.06,
      "start": 0.3
    }
  ]
}

Render it:

make video D=formats/scene/hello.json

You just wrote a scene with one text layer that splits its headline into words and rises each one into place, staggered in reading order. The theme sets the palette, fonts, and motion personality; pin: "center" places the layer in the middle of whatever aspect you render.

The authoring loop

Once you have a scene, the rhythm is: render, look, fix, repeat.

make video D=formats/scene/hello.json     # render
make look M=scene                          # storyboard the key frames
make audit                                 # overlap, contrast, safe-zone

Every check has its own page in Quality gates. Nothing here needs to run for a video to render, but they are how you catch a murky frame before you ship it.

Next steps