fframes README

The project's README from github.com/dmtrKovalenko/fframes. As one markdown file: README.md.

fframes

Video vibe coding framework that is actually fast.
Write your video in Rust and SVG, render it on the GPU.

crates.io docs.rs MIT license @fframes_rust on X

The fframes launch video, made with fframes

This 128 second video was vibed in 48 minutes and rendered in 36 seconds.
It is an fframes project: examples/fframes-intro.

Ask your agent for a video

fframes ships a skill for coding agents. Add it once:

npx skills add dmtrKovalenko/fframes

Then describe the video you want, the way you would brief a motion designer. The skill takes your agent from an empty folder to a rendered .mp4: it installs fframes, creates a project, designs the motion, places the sound, and checks the result before handing it to you.

The fframes API is explicit and verbose, and that is why it stayed unreleased for years. Writing explicit, verbose code is exactly what an agent with the right skill is good at.

Built for an author that cannot watch

A coding agent cannot watch a video or hear a soundtrack. Every generated project comes with a command line that turns a video into things an agent can read: PNGs, text and numbers.

Your agent You
Checks every frame without rendering pixels.
inspect reports missing fonts or images, text cut off by the canvas, invalid SVG and panics, each with its time and scene.

Looks at the motion.
strip lays evenly spaced frames out on one contact sheet, onion blends frames to show a movement's path and easing, frame writes full-size PNGs.

Measures the sound.
audio analyze reports loudness (LUFS), true peak, clipping and silence, per scene. 		Watch it in real time, with sound.
preview opens a GPU window to play, pause, seek and step through frame by frame.

Scrub it in the browser.
The editor runs the video compiled to WebAssembly, with a timeline.

Ship it.
render writes the final file; render --draft encodes one scene at half size in about a second.

Every command runs as cargo run --release -- <command> inside the project:

command output
timeline the scenes with their frame and second ranges, and every audio track with its mix settings
inspect problems in a frame every 0.25 s and the first and last frame of every scene; exit code 2 on errors
strip <scene> -n 12 strip.png, a labelled contact sheet
frame <scene>@end,<scene>@50% full-size PNGs in frames/
onion "<scene>@0..<scene>@1s" -n 6 onion.png, the blended movement
audio analyze --waveform w.png the loudness report and a waveform with scene lines and cue ticks
snapshot a comparison with approved PNGs, .diff.png marks what changed
preview the real-time window, for a human
render [--draft] the video, or a part of it

<scene> is the name of a scene struct in your video. Times read as 120 (frame), 3.2s, 50%, <scene>@1.2s, and ranges like <scene>@0..<scene>@1s. Add --json to parse the output.

Why it is fast

What your agent writes

Every frame is an SVG tree returned by a Rust function, written with the svgr! macro. From examples/hello-world, shortened: a square moves along a timeline and a line of text prints the current frame.

Show the code 
impl Video for HelloWorldVideo<'_> {
    const FPS: usize = 30;
    const WIDTH: usize = 1920;
    const HEIGHT: usize = 1080;

    fn duration(&self) -> fframes::Duration<'_> {
        fframes::Duration::Seconds(30.)
    }

    fn audio(&self) -> AudioMap<'_> {
        AudioMap::none()
    }

    fn render_frame(&self, frame: Frame, ctx: &FFramesContext) -> fframes::Svgr<'_> {
        fframes::svgr!(
            <svg
                xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
                viewBox="0 0 1920 1080"
                width={ctx.current_video_size.width}
                height={ctx.current_video_size.height}
            >
                <rect
                    x="400"
                    y="400"
                    width="200"
                    height="200"
                    fill="blue"
                    transform={frame.animate(fframes::timeline!(
                        at 0., animate Transform::translate(0, 0) => Transform::translate(200, 480), Easing::Linear,
                        at 2. => 6.0, animate Transform::translate(200, 480) => Transform::translate(750, -400), Easing::Linear,
                        at 6.0 => 10.0, animate Transform::translate(750, -400) => Transform::translate(1310, 480), Easing::Linear,
                    ))}
                />

                <text
                    x="100"
                    y="440"
                    font-family="JetBrains Mono"
                    font-size="74"
                    font-weight="500"
                    fill="#3b5563"
                >
                    {format!("This frame index: {}, second: {:.2}", frame.index, frame.seconds())}
                </text>
            </svg>
        )
    }
}

The skill's guides are plain Markdown and worth reading as a human too: the workflow, the API cheat sheet, design and sound. The full API reference is on docs.rs/fframes.

Examples

example what it shows
fframes-intro the 128 second launch video, everything placed on the beat grid of its soundtrack
signal-lab a 24 second motion study: product UI, data storytelling and a technical explainer
motion-graphics spring "punch in" motion and monospace text fitted to its box
shaders GPU shader layers composed with SVG: an SkSL background and a Shadertoy raymarcher clipped into a card
neon-triangle a minimal shader clip built to make banding and motion artifacts easy to spot
hello-world a simple "hello world" video
beta a complicated multi-scene example (our beta announce video)
marketing our marketing video
audio-announce an automated workflow to create audio visualisation with automated subtitles
podcast an audio visualization for a podcast placeholder video
teej-podcast teej's podcast with video and chapters visualization
tiktok a TikTok-like vertical video
conference-splash-screen one splash screen per conference talk, rendered in batch
low-poly-art a renderer stress test: animal art with a lot of polygons
pixel-memory my dog's memorial video generator (totally randomized)

From the repository root, just run podcast opens an example in the editor with live reload and just render podcast writes it to a file.

Without an agent

cargo install --locked cargo-fframes
cargo fframes new my-video
cd my-video && cargo run --release -- preview

cargo fframes new takes --template single-scene|multi-scene, --format landscape|portrait|square|uhd, --fps, --title and --backend. The first build compiles Skia and ffmpeg from source and takes a while; later builds take seconds. --backend cpu skips the Skia build (no preview window, slower renders). To track main, install with --git https://github.com/dmtrKovalenko/fframes.

Requirements

Rust and, for working on the editor, NodeJS. fframes compiles ffmpeg's libav libraries during the build, so the system encoders they link against have to be installed.

macOS 
brew install pkg-config ffmpeg x264 x265 opus nasm ninja
Linux

for debian based distros:

sudo apt-get install -y yasm nasm ffmpeg libx264-dev libx265-dev libopus-dev libclang-dev clang ninja-build libvpx-dev libasound2-dev

for arch based distros:

sudo pacman -S ninja yasm nasm ffmpeg x264 x265 opus clang

for nix users:

nix-shell
Windows

On Windows ffmpeg is not compiled from source. Instead fframes links a prebuilt FFmpeg 9.0 shared build (for example ffmpeg-n9.0-latest-win64-gpl-shared-9.0.zip from BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds) and needs LLVM for bindgen:

winget install LLVM.LLVM
# unzip the ffmpeg build somewhere, then point the build to it:
$env:FFMPEG_DIR = "C:\ffmpeg-n9.0-latest-win64-gpl-shared-9.0"
$env:LIBCLANG_PATH = "C:\Program Files\LLVM\bin"
# the ffmpeg DLLs must be reachable when building (proc macros load them) and running
$env:PATH = "$env:FFMPEG_DIR\bin;$env:PATH"

vcpkg install ffmpeg works as well instead of FFMPEG_DIR. Codecs come from the prebuilt build, so leave the codec features (h264, h265, ...) off: they request a from-source ffmpeg build which is not supported on Windows.

Codecs

Cargo features of the fframes crate choose which codecs and hardware acceleration libraries are linked:

[dependencies]
# this will enable and try to link libx264 during the build
fframes = { version = "1", features = ["h264", "libav-agree-gpl"] }

All the build and linking of codecs and other system libs are leveraging the ffmpeg build system, so for troubleshooting please refer the ffmpeg compilation guide.

Troubleshooting
  • Build fails in ffmpeg-sys-next: a system library from the list above is missing (nasm, pkg-config, the codec packages).
  • Build fails in the Skia bindings with a bindgen or libclang error: point LIBCLANG_PATH at a working libclang, on macOS Xcode's: export LIBCLANG_PATH=$(xcode-select -p)/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/lib.
  • Text renders in the wrong font: inspect reports No match for ... font-family; put the font file in the project's media/ folder and use its exact family name.

Working on fframes

Agents working on fframes itself should start from AGENTS.md. For humans, install the just command runner and init the repo:

npm install --global pnpm # the package manager for the nodejs based editor
cargo install --locked just cargo-watch wasm-bindgen-cli wasm-pack
just init-repo
just watch-editor # in a separate terminal, to work on the editor

License

fframes is released under the MIT License.

fframes (dmtrKovalenko/fframes)

glsl
Searching Database…

2.8K ·GitHub
Fframes
What is this?fframes is a Rust framework for writing videos as code: you compose scenes with Rust and SVG, and the GPU renders them into an MP4. It is built around actually being fast, unlike many code-first video tools.
Is this a GUI video editor or do I write code?You author videos in Rust: each frame is an SVG tree returned by a Rust function written with the svgr! macro. There is no timeline GUI for authoring, though a browser-based WASM editor with live reload lets you preview and scrub.
How do I create a new project?Run cargo fframes new, choosing a --template (single-scene or multi-scene), --format (landscape, portrait, square, uhd), --fps, --title and --backend. The first build compiles Skia and ffmpeg from source so it takes a while; later builds take seconds.
What do I need installed before building it?You need Rust, and Node.js if you plan to work on the WASM editor. fframes compiles ffmpeg's libav libraries during the build, so the matching system encoder packages must already be installed (Homebrew on macOS, apt/pacman/nix on Linux, LLVM plus a prebuilt FFmpeg zip on Windows).
Any install pitfalls I should expect?The first build compiles Skia and ffmpeg from source, which takes a while. On Windows, ffmpeg links a prebuilt shared build instead, so codec features like h264/h265 must be left off since they require a from-source build that is not supported there.
Who is fframes really for?Developers comfortable writing Rust who want programmatic motion graphics, and especially coding agents: fframes ships an installable skill that takes an agent from an empty folder to a rendered .mp4 automatically.
Which platforms does fframes run on?macOS, Linux and Windows are all supported, each with its own set of ffmpeg build instructions (Homebrew on macOS, distro packages or nix on Linux, a prebuilt FFmpeg zip plus LLVM on Windows).
Do I need a specific GPU or backend to render?The default Skia backend uses Metal on macOS and Vulkan on Linux/Windows for about 10x faster rendering than the CPU backend; passing --backend cpu skips the Skia build entirely at the cost of speed and the live preview window.
What makes fframes faster than tools like Remotion or a plain CPU renderer?It renders through Skia on the GPU (Metal on macOS, Vulkan on Linux/Windows) for roughly 10x the speed of the CPU backend, caches static markup without {expressions} at compile time, and links ffmpeg's libav libraries directly instead of shelling out to a separate process.
How does a coding agent check that a video turned out right if it can't watch it?fframes turns the video into things an agent can read: inspect flags missing fonts, cut-off text and invalid SVG per frame, strip and onion produce labelled contact sheets of the motion, and audio analyze reports loudness, clipping and silence as numbers.
Can I iterate on a video without fully rendering it every time?Yes: preview opens a real-time GPU window to scrub frame by frame, the WASM browser editor supports live reload, and render --draft encodes a scene at half size in about a second.
What exactly does the fframes agent skill do?Once added to a coding agent, it walks from an empty folder to a finished .mp4: it installs fframes, scaffolds a project, designs the motion and sound placement, and checks the render before handing it back to you.
What are similar projects?filmcraft, framefields, effectcraft, flutter_scene, ps2-web-recomp, Infinite, herk-edit-kit, motion-video-kit
Which topics is it in?remotion, glsl, shader, motion-graphics, video-editing, metal, vulkan, rendering, video-processing, gpu-acceleration, svg, coding-agents
Creator
dmtrKovalenko
Size
1.5 GB
Stars
2.8K
Updated
CommitOct 18Releasev1.2.0Oct 03
Age
4y
Commits · 90 Days