timescale.info#243 · Add an explainer video series: audiences, scripts and the pipeline that renders them
- timeline-app
- pull request
- videos
Ten explainer videos, each made for an audience, with the system that renders them, copied from CMR Scanner's storyboard and infographic system and adapted. ## What's here - **[`publicity/0-audiences-and-series.md`](publicity/0-audiences-and-series.md):** ten audiences in five clusters (readers, makers, skeptics of precision, owners of their data, teams), with what each doubts and what proof convinces them. It also explains why there are ten videos rather than four, how the storyboards vary by audience in five looks, and the guardrails every script follows. - **Ten scripts and storyboards** (`publicity/1-…` to `10-…`), in CMR Scanner's format. Each has FRAME, MOTION, on-screen text and narration per scene, then the narration alone for the voice session, the claims and their sources, and likely questions. | # | Video | For | Look | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | What is OpenChronology? | Everyone | Paper | | 2 | How to see a timeline | Readers | Paper | | 3 | Website, desktop or offline? | Choosing an edition, privacy | Paper | | 4 | Exact time: rational numbers | Technical viewers | Terminal | | 5 | Tour: the United States, 1775–2008 | Students, teachers | Archive, real app | | 6 | Tour: a story's timeline | Writers, game masters | Parchment, real app | | 7 | Tour: deep time | Science educators | Strata, real app | | 8 | Working together | Classes, communities | Paper | | 9 | Timelines from logs | Operations | Terminal, real app | | 10 | Run your own server | Administrators | Terminal | - **The pipeline**, [`publicity/video/`](publicity/video/README.md), is CMR Scanner's leadership-brief system, generalised. - Scenes are SVG drawn as pure functions of time and cued to the narration's words. - Scenes, acts, on-screen text and narration are read straight from each script. - A scratch voice (Piper, offline) reads the narration until it's recorded; the same whisper.cpp alignment takes a real recording. - The tours capture the real editor, frame by frame, opening sample timelines. - **Sample timelines**, [`publicity/video/samples/`](publicity/video/samples/README.md), built with the editor's own plugins and checked with its validator: - the United States, with Wikipedia sources; - "The Ember Crown", an original fantasy world in its own calendar; - deep time in the ICS chart's eons and colours; - a made-up outage's syslog. Narration, audio, captured shots, frames and MP4s are kept out of git. All ten have been rendered with the scratch voice: 1080p30, AAC, with an English caption track, about 20 minutes in all. ## Before release - **timescale.info:** confirm it is live and open to sign-ups. Videos 1 and 3 name it, and the scripts mark it **[CONFIRM]**. - **Narration:** record each script's Appendix A, then re-run prepare → build → captions → audio → render → encode ([video README](publicity/video/README.md#recording-the-narration)). ## Found along the way - #241: the ruler draws two labels at each hour at an 8-hour view. - #242: unit displays switch to unreadable offset labels when zoomed far into a large unit. `npm test` (301) passes, including the contents checks for the new folders.