cutan.characters.record

Record a character’s preview HTML to an mp4.

Uses Playwright’s video recording (saved as webm) and converts to mp4 via ffmpeg. The result is a real video file showing the new SVG character art animating: cycling visemes + breath/head-tilt.

This is a stop-gap until Phase 11b wires the SVG-texture path into runtime.js and proper scene rendering uses the new character art directly.

>>> # Smoke-tested in tests/test_characters_record.py

Functions

record_character(char_dir, *[, name, ...])

Render preview.html for the character at char_dir and record it.

record_preview_to_mp4(preview_html, out_mp4, *)

Record preview_html to out_mp4 for duration_s seconds.

Exceptions

PreviewRecordError

Raised when preview recording fails.
exception cutan.characters.record.PreviewRecordError[source]

Bases: RuntimeError

Raised when preview recording fails.

cutan.characters.record.record_character(char_dir, *, name=None, out_mp4=None, duration_s=8.0, size=(640, 480))[source]

Render preview.html for the character at char_dir and record it.

The preview HTML is generated/refreshed via the same writer used by an character preview, so this command is self-contained.

Return type:

Path

cutan.characters.record.record_preview_to_mp4(preview_html, out_mp4, *, duration_s=8.0, size=(640, 480), fps=30, crf=23)[source]

Record preview_html to out_mp4 for duration_s seconds.

Returns the output mp4 path.

Pipeline:

  1. Playwright launches headless Chromium with video recording on.

  2. Navigates to preview_html (file:// URL).

  3. Waits duration_s real-time so the browser captures frames.

  4. Closes the context to flush the webm.

  5. ffmpeg re-encodes the webm to H.264 mp4 (better compatibility, smaller files, plays in quicktime / GitHub previews).

Both Playwright (project dep) and ffmpeg (system dep, already required by the renderer) must be installed.

Return type:

Path