{
 "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
 "title": "Video blog",
 "home_page_url": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/",
 "feed_url": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/feed.json",
 "description": "Practical posts on templated video, scene timelines, sound and rendering in the browser, from the team building Video.",
 "language": "en",
 "items": [
  {
   "id": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/videos-are-documents/",
   "url": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/videos-are-documents/",
   "title": "Your next video is a document, not a project file",
   "summary": "Why templated video beats the timeline for release notes, loops and shorts, and what changes when a video is a typed spec you can diff, fill and re-theme.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Video team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "product",
    "templates"
   ],
   "content_text": "A video project file is a binary. You cannot diff it, you cannot review it, and you cannot hand it to a colleague who does not have the same editor. Every video is made by hand and every change is another afternoon.\nMost of the videos a small team needs do not need that. They are release notes, a product loop, a quote card, a vertical teaser. The shape is the same each time. Only the words and the picture change.\nWhat changes when the video is data\nA form can fill it. A template is a typed spec with a schema, and the form in the editor is made from the schema. Three features means three fields. A wrong value is named by field.\nYou can read it. A scene video is a list of scenes, each with a duration, a transition, a background and layers. Positions are percent of the frame and time is in seconds. You can diff two versions in a text editor.\nYou can batch it. A collection of videos can be re-themed or re-sized in one step. The client wants vertical versions of all four? One batch, with a list of anything that could not follow and why.\nAn AI can draft it. Your assistant can read a template's schema and a valid sample, create a draft, edit one scene at a time and run the quality check. It does not need a screen to click. It cannot press render, which is fine: that is yours.\nWhat you give up\nA timeline editor lets you do anything. A spec lets you do what the spec describes. For the shapes above that is enough. For a documentary or a camera edit it is not. Video does not edit footage and does not generate any.\nThe practical effect\nA release video that takes an afternoon the first time takes a minute the fifth time, because the template holds the look and the structure and you only supply the words. That is the point."
  },
  {
   "id": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/release-notes-video-from-a-changelog/",
   "url": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/release-notes-video-from-a-changelog/",
   "title": "Make a release-notes video from a changelog in a minute",
   "summary": "A practical routine: keep a release-notes template, let your AI fill it from the changelog, check the quality warnings and render the MP4 in your browser.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Video team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "how-to",
    "templates"
   ],
   "content_text": "Most changelogs are read by nobody. A thirty-second video of the same list is watched by more people, and it is not much more work if the template is already yours.\nOnce: make the template yours\nStart from the release-notes template. Choose a theme and a brand, a size (1080p for a site, vertical for stories) and your logo. Save the result as a template of your own, so the look is fixed and only the content changes.\nEvery release: the routine\n**Copy the changelog** of the release. Keep to three or four items; a viewer cannot read more in twelve seconds.\n**Ask your AI** to fill the template. Through Geenius OS it reads the template's schema and a valid sample, creates a draft video and returns a link. The prompt can be as short as: \"Make release notes for v2.4 from this changelog using my release template, check it with lint and give me the link.\"\n**Open the link** and watch the preview. The preview is the render's drawing, so what you see is what you get.\n**Read the warnings.** If an item is too long to read in the time it has, shorten it. Reading speed is counted at about three and a half words a second.\n**Press render.** The MP4 is made in your browser. Download it or save it to your Media library.\nWhy a person renders\nRendering runs in a browser with WebCodecs, on your machine. An AI cannot do that, and in practice that is not a limit: the step where you watch the preview is the one worth keeping.\nSmall things that help\nPut the version number in the first scene and nothing else: it is what people search for.\nUse the same item order as the changelog, so the video and the text agree.\nRe-size to vertical in one click for the short version."
  },
  {
   "id": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/one-spec-four-sizes/",
   "url": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/one-spec-four-sizes/",
   "title": "One spec, four sizes: stop rebuilding videos for every channel",
   "summary": "How Video draws the same video at 1080p, 720p, square and vertical from one spec, and how to resize a whole collection in a batch.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Video team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "how-to",
    "sizes"
   ],
   "content_text": "Every channel wants a different shape: wide for a site, square for a feed, vertical for stories and shorts. Most people rebuild the video for each. It is the same words and the same pictures, laid out three more times.\nLayout as a function\nIn Video a scene is described in percent of the frame and text sizes are tokens. A layout is therefore a function of the frame: the same spec draws at 1920 by 1080, 1280 by 720, 1080 by 1080 and 1080 by 1920. Components adapt: a phone showcase stands beside the text in a wide frame and below it in a tall one.\nDo it in two steps\nMake the video at the size you care about most.\nChange the size. The preview updates at once. If a scene needs a nudge for the new shape, edit that scene.\nBatch it\nA collection can be re-sized as a whole. Put the four videos of a launch in one collection, choose resize to vertical, and get four vertical drafts. A video that cannot follow is listed with the reason, for example an imported film, which is never resized. Duplicate the collection first, as a new version, if you want to keep the wide set.\nWhat to watch for\n**Text length.** A vertical frame is narrow; long lines wrap more. The quality bar warns when text sits outside the safe area.\n**Pictures.** A wide picture cropped to vertical may lose the subject. Choose pictures with room around them.\n**Pace.** Vertical videos are watched on a phone: shorter scenes read better.\nAnd the render\nEach size is a separate render, made in your browser. Render the wide one, then the vertical one, and you have a set from one spec.\nA checklist before you render each size\n**Read the first scene aloud.** If the title does not fit on two lines in the vertical frame, shorten it.\n**Look at the last scene.** Outros with a logo and a line of text are the usual casualty of a narrow frame.\n**Check the safe area warning.** It is the cheapest way to find text that the platform's interface will cover.\n**Play the sound.** The mix is the same at every size, but a vertical short is often heard on a phone speaker: dialogue and effects matter more than a music bed.\nWhen to make a separate version\nResizing is right when the content is the same. Sometimes it is not: a vertical teaser might need a different first line, or only three of the six features. In that case duplicate the video, resize the copy and edit it. Because every scene has a stable id and every edit is atomic, the copy stays a clean document and the original is untouched.\nKeep the set together\nPut the wide, square and vertical versions of one video in one collection with a name that says what they are. When the content changes, you change the wide one, duplicate the collection as a new version, and redo the sizes in a batch."
  },
  {
   "id": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/a-theme-is-a-brand-in-one-line/",
   "url": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/a-theme-is-a-brand-in-one-line/",
   "title": "A theme is a brand in one line: re-skin a whole collection",
   "summary": "How themes and brands work in Video, what a theme sets, what always wins over it, and how to re-theme a collection when a client changes their mind.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Video team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "how-to",
    "themes"
   ],
   "content_text": "Changing the look of one video is easy. Changing the look of forty, the day the client sends a new brand guide, is the test of a system.\nWhat a theme sets\nA theme is a named token set: a palette, a type pair, a shape (radius, density, shadow), how things move and the scene change it prefers. Video ships seventeen, taken from real design rounds, and three brands with dark and light modes.\nIn a spec it is one line, look: "r7-signal". A scene can carry its own look, and a template can take the theme as a parameter.\nWhat always wins\nAn explicit brand or mode on a video wins over what a theme says. That is deliberate: a theme proposes, you decide. A video with no theme draws exactly as before.\nRe-theming a collection\nPut the videos of a client in a collection. When the look changes, choose re-theme and the theme: every video is re-made with the new tokens. Anything that cannot take the change is listed with the reason. If you want to keep the old set, duplicate the collection first as a new version and re-theme the copy.\nComponents that follow\nComponents read the tokens, so a quote card, a phone showcase and a lower third all change with the theme. That is why Video builds videos from components rather than from loose pictures: a picture cannot be re-themed.\nA small discipline\nUse a theme for the look, and keep the words out of it. The less your videos have baked into pictures, the more a re-theme can do.\nDesigning a video so a theme can change it\nA re-theme can only change what is made of tokens. A few habits make that work:\n**Use components and layers, not baked pictures.** A text layer takes its colour and font from the theme; text inside a picture does not.\n**Keep the logo as a layer.** A logo outro that is a snippet can be swapped once and inserted everywhere.\n**Do not hard-code colours** unless you mean to. A hard-coded colour will stay when the theme changes. That is sometimes the point, for a brand colour that must never move, but it should be a decision.\n**Check both modes.** A brand has a dark and a light mode, and a video can use either. Preview both before you hand a set to a client.\nMascots\nEach brand has its own marks. The default is Gee for Geenius, Dot in Round 6, and Wunda in Wundaly. A mascot peek component brings one into a scene, and it follows the theme's colours.\nWhat not to expect\nA theme changes the look of a video. It does not rewrite the words or rebuild a layout that does not suit the new brand. If a new brand has a very different shape, you will still edit scenes by hand. The saving is that you edit a few scenes, not forty videos."
  },
  {
   "id": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/let-your-ai-fill-the-form/",
   "url": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/let-your-ai-fill-the-form/",
   "title": "Let your AI fill the form, and keep the render button",
   "summary": "How to work with Claude, ChatGPT or Grok on videos in Video: read the schema, draft, edit scene by scene, lint, and hand over a link for a person to render.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Video team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "mcp",
    "how-to"
   ],
   "content_text": "Video has no AI of its own. It has a door for yours. Once Video is added to your Geenius OS workspace and your assistant is connected to Geenius OS, the assistant has a tool called geenius_video with five areas: template, video, collection, asset and snippet.\nA good order of work\n**Read the schema.** Ask the assistant to read the template, which returns the schema and a valid sample. Starting from the sample, it only has to change values.\n**Create the draft.** The first write validates the whole spec. If something is wrong, the message names the scene and the field and says what to write.\n**Edit scene by scene.** Each edit is atomic. The assistant can add a scene, update one, move it or copy scenes from another video, without rewriting the rest.\n**Lint.** It asks for the quality warnings and fixes them: too many words for the time, text outside the safe area, a scene with no motion.\n**Hand over the link.** The draft waits until a person opens it in Video and presses Render. The assistant reads back the link and gives it to you.\nWhat it cannot do\nIt cannot render, because rendering runs in a browser on a person's machine. It cannot change the file of an imported film. It cannot make footage, because Video has none to make.\nTips for the prompt\nName the template and the size. \"Release notes, 1080p\" beats \"a video about the release\".\nGive it the real content and ask it not to invent features.\nAsk for lint and the link at the end.\nFor a long video, ask for an outline first, then chapter by chapter.\nA sample ask\nUse Geenius OS and my Video account. Make a quote video from this line: "Ship the small thing today." Use my quote template at square size, check it with lint and give me the link.\nWhy this split\nThe assistant is good at words and structure. The preview is where you check taste. The render button is where the file becomes real. Keeping those three apart keeps you in charge of what leaves the building."
  },
  {
   "id": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/sound-in-short-videos/",
   "url": "https://video.geenius.io/blog/sound-in-short-videos/",
   "title": "Sound in short videos: music, effects and voice without a mixing desk",
   "summary": "A short guide to adding music, a few effects and a voice track to a scene video: timing, fades, ducking and credits, and what to check in the preview.",
   "date_published": "2026-10-17T09:00:00Z",
   "authors": [
    {
     "name": "The Video team"
    }
   ],
   "tags": [
    "how-to",
    "sound"
   ],
   "content_text": "Most short videos play with the sound off, and the ones that do not usually have too much of it. A little sound goes a long way: a bed of music, one or two effects on the beats, and a voice when there is something to say.\nThink in three tracks\nVideo lets a scene video carry up to 24 tracks, each a music, effect or voice track placed on the video's timeline in seconds. For a short piece you need three at most.\n**Music** under the whole video, loud enough to feel, quiet enough to ignore.\n**Effects** on the moments that matter: a whoosh on a transition, a tick when a number lands.\n**Voice** if you have one.\nLet the music duck\nWhen voice or effects play, the music should dip. A track's duck value is the level the music drops to under them. A value around a quarter works for most voice-overs.\nFade the edges\nA hard start and a hard stop sound cheap. Give music a fade-in of a second or two and a fade-out at the end. Effects rarely need fades.\nLoop with care\nIf the music is shorter than the video, loop it. Check that the loop point is not obvious, or fade it out and bring in a second track.\nCredit what you use\nEvery track has a credit field. Put the author and licence there. Use sounds you have the right to use: your own, or licensed. A deployment may have a library of licensed music and effects connected; where it does not, upload your own file.\nCheck in the preview\nThe preview plays the same mix as the render, but the browser keeps a page silent until you click or tap it. Do that first. Listen on the speakers your viewers will use, not only on headphones.\nWhat gets rendered\nThe render mixes all tracks to one stereo bus and writes one AAC track into the MP4. A video with no tracks has no audio track at all, which is the right choice for silent loops."
  }
 ]
}