---
name: "demo_video_production"
description: "Plan, record, edit, and publish compelling demo videos for agent projects, launches, and demo nights. Use when producing a product demo video, launch trailer, demo-night entry, or short-form cut — covers the 5-beat script structure, screen-capture settings, and tested ffmpeg edit pipelines."
---

# Demo Video Production

## Purpose
Turn a working project into a video that makes people care. Demo videos win launches and demo nights because they show the thing working, live, before explaining anything. This skill covers the full pipeline: structure → script → record → edit (ffmpeg) → format per platform → publish checklist.

## Workflow

### 1. Structure: the 5-beat demo
Every demo video follows five beats, in order:
1. **Hook (first 5 seconds).** The product in action, full-screen, no talking head. Say the most surprising thing first.
2. **Problem.** One or two sentences on the pain. Make the viewer feel it.
3. **Demo.** The live thing working. This is 50-70% of the runtime. No slides here — only the product.
4. **Payoff.** What changes because this exists. One concrete before/after.
5. **CTA.** Where to go next. One link, said out loud and shown on screen.

Rule of thumb: if the demo can fail live, show the attempt anyway — a real attempt that wobbles beats a narrated slide deck every time.

### 2. Script: write to be spoken
- Write full spoken sentences, not bullet points you will ad-lib from. Read-aloud pace is roughly 130 words per minute; budget a 3-minute demo night slot at ~390 spoken words including pauses.
- Mark demo beats in the script: `[LIVE: click Play, start game]` so the edit has cue points.
- Rehearse once out loud before recording. It catches tongue-twisters and reveals where the demo is boring.

### 3. Record: capture settings
Screen-capture baseline (OBS or ffmpeg `x11grab`):
- 1920x1080 at 30fps for the 16:9 master. Record the region of interest, not the whole desktop — crop out notifications and bookmarks.
- Capture audio separately if you can (mic on its own track). Kill fans and notifications before the take; re-record the take rather than repairing noisy audio.
- Leave 2 seconds of silence at the start and end of every take. It gives the edit room to breathe.

### 4. Edit: assemble in ffmpeg
Trim dead air, join the best takes, normalize the voice, add a title card. All tested commands live in `references/ffmpeg-recipes.md` — they were verified on ffmpeg 8.1.2 (2026-09-17) and must be re-verified with a dry run on a sample clip before the real edit.

### 5. Format per platform
- **16:9 master:** 1920x1080, H.264 + AAC, for YouTube and X.
- **9:16 short-form cut:** 1080x1920, for Shorts/Reels/TikTok. Reframe by center-cropping the region of interest (don't just shrink the 16:9 — text becomes unreadable). Add burned-in captions or large text overlays; most short-form is watched muted.
- Platform facts (verified via YouTube Shorts guides, updated Aug 2026; see `references/platform-specs.md`): Shorts can run up to 3 minutes since October 15, 2024 (previously 60 seconds). 1080x1920 fills mobile screens; export H.264/AAC in MP4 with `-movflags +faststart` so playback starts before the download finishes.

### 6. Publish checklist
- Title: product name + what it does, under 60 characters so it isn't truncated.
- Description: one-sentence pitch, the link, then two lines of context. Tags optional, chapters for anything over 2 minutes.
- Thumbnail: one frame pulled from the edited video (see recipes) + 3-5 words max, tested readable at 120px wide.
- Post the short-form cut natively on each platform — never as a link to the long video.

## Output Contract
Each production delivers: the spoken script with demo cue marks, raw takes, the edited 16:9 master, a 9:16 short-form cut, and a title + description + thumbnail draft. Nothing is "done" until the master plays start-to-finish with no dead air and the audio is normalized.

## Operating Rules
1. **The thing working, first.** Lead with the live product. Slides and architecture come after the hook, never before it.
2. **Never fake what you can't show.** A real attempt that wobbles is credible; a mocked-up success is not.
3. **Audio carries the video.** Normalize the voice to -16 LUFS and kill room noise before touching the picture.
4. **Short-form gets captions burned in.** If there's no text on screen, muted viewers scroll past.
5. **One link per CTA.** Every extra link halves the chance anyone clicks any of them.
6. **Test every render command on a sample clip first.** Never run the real edit on untested filter chains.