InstantVideos.org – short documentaries in ~30 seconds

instantvideos.org26 pointsby pw31 comments

Discussion summary

InstantVideos.org offers ~30 second documentaries, with recent discussions focusing on video rendering performance and platform features.

What the discussion says

Users are experimenting with video rendering times and GPU acceleration.
Some users report issues with image generation and rate limits.
The platform is appreciated for its simplicity and accurate narration.

“The audio narration is great and the documentary is accurate.”
— kittikitti

“I'm no expert here and was working w/ GLM-5.2, but rendering was CPU bound.”
— pw

Comments

Hacker News

Did you really rent a 64 vCPU EC2 without exploiting ffmpeg GPU acceleration?

by jazzyjackson

I'm no expert here and was working w/ GLM-5.2, but whatever rendering we were doing ended up being CPU bound.

by pw

I'm guessing its being hugged now - it says generate in under a minute but my short is taking ten minutes and counting; anyway I like the simplicity and am interested in seeing the results - though I do think it is quite depressing as we will see this sort of service mostly put to use for slop.

by mellosouls

Hi! Sorry yeah, I'm been bumping up against rate limits, but it should be working again now!

by pw

https://instantvideos.org/video/6be78e5ea542

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Short form)

The audio narration is great and the documentary is accurate. Improvements could include more pictures or animations.

This is a very great tool and framework! Thank you so much.

by kittikitti

No, thank you for trying it!

by pw

Image not generating?

by ms7892

Working on it!

by pw

Fixed!

by pw

Ugh looks like I'm hitting my Gemini Tier 1 usage limits. Sorry!

by pw

Fixed!

by pw

Could you publish the source code or how to do it for our sueltes?

by bitelchux

I'm around to answer questions or receive feedback if anyone as any!

by pw

Please, pretty please, link some pre-generated examples.

by urbnspacecowboy

Cool idea! Looks like my prompt is stuck, though. Might be an idea to provide a share link at the moment of hitting the button so you can check back later, because if I close the tab I will lose my prompt

by ramon156

Yeah the disk on the instance filled up and it was down. Sorry. It's up again now.

by pw

It’s an interesting concept, perhaps it could go more from ”narrated slide show” to ”video clip” in the near future if it doesn’t cost too much.

by eckelhesten

Yeah I'd been thinking of Gemini Omni for that but it adds about 10 cents per second of video, so not cheap.

by pw

Currently getting errors

---

File "/usr/lib/python3.10/concurrent/futures/thread.py", line 58, in run result = self.fn(self.args, *self.kwargs) File "/home/ubuntu/byclaude/video/harness/pipeline/pipeline.py", line 829, in build_clip clip = round(dur + TAIL, 3) TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'NoneType' and 'float' Video build failed (pipeline exit 1) — please try again. Powered by AI · by Claude · ~

by albert_e

Should be fixed now

by pw

You could probably make your infra cheaper if you sent the generated slides to the web client and use some js ffmpeg wasm to compile the video in the browser. This way you could probably use the cheapest VPS to handle this.

by f055

Fun idea! Hope it doesn't cost you too much to keep up depending on how much traction this thread gets ;)

One small quirk I noticed with the generated short video: for each new slide/photo, there is a very gradual "zoom in" effect that occurs, which causes text to jitter a bit and is a bit disorienting. Not sure if that is specific to the "The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 in Boston" prompt I used or not.

Also, is Claude involved in the video generation itself? I noticed the generated video has "By Claude" in the top left corner, but the logs seem to indicate that only GLM-5.2, Gemini Flash, and GPT-4o are involved (just curious!)

by nickvec

Yeah, that's suppose to be a Ken Burns style zoom but I haven't figured out how to stop the shake the should probably just remove it. And I need to remove the "By Claude" too. That's a remnant from porting from my internal framework for the [By Claude)(https://www.youtube.com/@byclaude) Youtube, TikTok, etc channels.

by pw

How would I create a video like this?

For example, I have several posts that explain concepts in detail, with supporting images. They're written in Markdown, and I keep refining them until I'm confident that the average person can read them and immediately understand the concept.

The problem is that text is becoming a less popular medium for learning, while short form videos are increasingly being used to explain the same ideas.

From what I can tell, this tool only lets you provide a prompt. Can it turn my existing Markdown posts and images into videos, or is it mainly intended for generating videos from simple prompts? I'm looking for something that preserves the explanations I've already written rather than creating something entirely new.

by faangguyindia

So this is really just a kinda proof of concept, but I'd be pretty easy to turn it into what you want. It sounds like you've already got both basically a script and images to go with it?

by pw

it works, but can u add different style of videos like this one:

Style 1: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vGjrv2zjfsM

Style 2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6KoRHpAZ4zk

These are the two styles that consistently keep me watching. I can't really describe them well in words, so I linked the videos directly to avoid losing important details in the translation from visual format to text.

Maybe someone with more experience in video production can explain what techniques are being used here and why they're so effective at holding viewers' attention.

by faangguyindia

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Hacker News
Did you really rent a 64 vCPU EC2 without exploiting ffmpeg GPU acceleration?
by jazzyjackson
I'm no expert here and was working w/ GLM-5.2, but whatever rendering we were doing ended up being CPU bound.
by pw
I'm guessing its being hugged now - it says generate in under a minute but my short is taking ten minutes and counting; anyway I like the simplicity and am interested in seeing the results - though I do think it is quite depressing as we will see this sort of service mostly put to use for slop.
by mellosouls
Hi! Sorry yeah, I'm been bumping up against rate limits, but it should be working again now!
by pw
https://instantvideos.org/video/6be78e5ea542
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Short form)
The audio narration is great and the documentary is accurate. Improvements could include more pictures or animations.
This is a very great tool and framework! Thank you so much.
by kittikitti
No, thank you for trying it!
by pw
Image not generating?
by ms7892
Working on it!
by pw
Fixed!
by pw
Ugh looks like I'm hitting my Gemini Tier 1 usage limits. Sorry!
by pw
Fixed!
by pw
Could you publish the source code or how to do it for our sueltes?
by bitelchux
I'm around to answer questions or receive feedback if anyone as any!
by pw
Please, pretty please, link some pre-generated examples.
by urbnspacecowboy
Cool idea! Looks like my prompt is stuck, though. Might be an idea to provide a share link at the moment of hitting the button so you can check back later, because if I close the tab I will lose my prompt
by ramon156
Yeah the disk on the instance filled up and it was down. Sorry. It's up again now.
by pw
It’s an interesting concept, perhaps it could go more from ”narrated slide show” to ”video clip” in the near future if it doesn’t cost too much.
by eckelhesten
Yeah I'd been thinking of Gemini Omni for that but it adds about 10 cents per second of video, so not cheap.
by pw
Currently getting errors
---
File "/usr/lib/python3.10/concurrent/futures/thread.py", line 58, in run result = self.fn(self.args, *self.kwargs) File "/home/ubuntu/byclaude/video/harness/pipeline/pipeline.py", line 829, in build_clip clip = round(dur + TAIL, 3) TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'NoneType' and 'float' Video build failed (pipeline exit 1) — please try again. Powered by AI · by Claude · ~
by albert_e
Should be fixed now
by pw
You could probably make your infra cheaper if you sent the generated slides to the web client and use some js ffmpeg wasm to compile the video in the browser. This way you could probably use the cheapest VPS to handle this.
by f055
Fun idea! Hope it doesn't cost you too much to keep up depending on how much traction this thread gets ;)
One small quirk I noticed with the generated short video: for each new slide/photo, there is a very gradual "zoom in" effect that occurs, which causes text to jitter a bit and is a bit disorienting. Not sure if that is specific to the "The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 in Boston" prompt I used or not.
Also, is Claude involved in the video generation itself? I noticed the generated video has "By Claude" in the top left corner, but the logs seem to indicate that only GLM-5.2, Gemini Flash, and GPT-4o are involved (just curious!)
by nickvec
Yeah, that's suppose to be a Ken Burns style zoom but I haven't figured out how to stop the shake the should probably just remove it. And I need to remove the "By Claude" too. That's a remnant from porting from my internal framework for the [By Claude)(https://www.youtube.com/@byclaude) Youtube, TikTok, etc channels.
by pw
How would I create a video like this?
For example, I have several posts that explain concepts in detail, with supporting images. They're written in Markdown, and I keep refining them until I'm confident that the average person can read them and immediately understand the concept.
The problem is that text is becoming a less popular medium for learning, while short form videos are increasingly being used to explain the same ideas.
From what I can tell, this tool only lets you provide a prompt. Can it turn my existing Markdown posts and images into videos, or is it mainly intended for generating videos from simple prompts? I'm looking for something that preserves the explanations I've already written rather than creating something entirely new.
by faangguyindia
So this is really just a kinda proof of concept, but I'd be pretty easy to turn it into what you want. It sounds like you've already got both basically a script and images to go with it?
by pw
it works, but can u add different style of videos like this one:
Style 1: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vGjrv2zjfsM
Style 2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6KoRHpAZ4zk
These are the two styles that consistently keep me watching. I can't really describe them well in words, so I linked the videos directly to avoid losing important details in the translation from visual format to text.
Maybe someone with more experience in video production can explain what techniques are being used here and why they're so effective at holding viewers' attention.
by faangguyindia