Scenario Video

Scenario Video Generation and Editing

Overview

Scenario exposes a large video catalog through one MCP loop: text-to-video and image-to-video generators plus video-to-video editors, lipsync, upscalers, and deterministic cut/split/concat tools. Per-family contracts: scenario-kling, scenario-veo, scenario-seedance, scenario-gemini-omni, scenario-luma-video, scenario-runway, scenario-grok-imagine-video, scenario-wan, scenario-minimax-video, scenario-vidu.

Connection and the core generation loop: see the scenario skill. If a sibling skill named here is missing from your available skills, ask the user to install it (npx skills add scenario-labs/skills --skill <name>); unattended, proceed from tool schemas and flag the gap.

Quick reference

Worked example: animate a key art still into a short ad clip

1. recommend with the user's own words as prompt (the need is a capability, img2video); handle next_step as the scenario skill directs.
2. model_schema_get on the pick. Note the image field, duration options, and any last-frame anchor.
3. upload_asset the still; it returns asset_id="asset_abc".
4. model_run with parameters={"image": "asset_abc", "prompt": "Close-up on the mug; slow dolly-in as steam curls through window light, shallow focus on the rim. Room tone and a soft kettle hiss, no subtitles."} and wait=false. Returns a job_id.
5. jobs_wait with job_ids=["job_xyz"], re-called with pending_job_ids while any remain.
6. asset_display the output (asset_id), then asset_download (no format).

The source image already fixes the look, so prompt only motion, camera, and timing ("orbit left", "hold on the final pose"), changing one clause per retry. A first-frame field pins how the clip opens (a last-frame field, where offered, how it lands, and only beside a first frame: alone it is a 400 A first frame must be provided if a last frame is set); a reference-image field carries identity and look without fixing any moment. So an exact opening composition goes in as a rendered still and a recurring character or product as references; whether one run takes both is per schema, and several forbid the pair. A reference-audio field is guidance the prompt has to claim: what it conditions (timing and energy on one family, a voice on another) and whether it rides alone or needs an image or video reference beside it are the family skill's contract, but on every member a track passed silently beside a character reference is easily ignored, so the prompt says what the track is for ("the reference audio is her own voice, lip-synced" for speech; the beat the cuts land on for music). Trained LoRAs do not ride along: at authoring time no video member took loras, so a custom style reaches video through a still generated with the LoRA and passed as the first frame or a reference. Iterate at the cheapest resolution tier and shortest useful duration, then upscale the keeper: a re-run at a higher tier is a new generation, since many video schemas expose no seed and none promises one reproduces a shot across tiers.

Prompting a shot

Write the prompt as a shot direction in sentences, not tags: shot size, setting, subject and one action, one named slow camera move, light source, style, and an audio line, in the order the family skill gives. Named moves and concrete light survive generation; mood words do not.

Many generators return sound with the picture (dialogue, effects, ambience, sometimes a score), switched by generateAudio or audio where the schema has one, each with its own default; with none, the search hit says whether sound comes back, and the prompt is the only lever over what does. Effects and ambience go in plain words and dialogue in quotes, naming only what should sound: "no music" can trip the soundtrack's own moderation just as a named genre or instrument does (the score is laid once in assembly; switch the audio off when assembly supplies the whole soundtrack). When music leaks in anyway, re-run with the audio off and add the sound from a sound-effects or video-to-audio model; a member with no audio switch cannot take that re-run, so move to one that has one. The picture still takes exclusions, "no subtitles, no on-screen text", since a caption tool adds captions and removes none. Exclusions ride the prompt unless the schema has negativePrompt. Type the viewer must read is composited in assembly (scenario-video-assembly): generated type drifts.

Editing existing footage

All editing is model_run on a video-input model found with recommend:

• Prompt-driven edits (restyle, swap objects, characters, backgrounds, or reframe to another aspect ratio). A reframe outpaints past the frame, unlike a deterministic resize. When a prompt-driven editor misses a directed change (a recolor, a prop swap), edit the still: asset_get returns the clip's firstFrame as a free asset id; edit it with an image model and re-render from it as the first frame, the source clip beside it where the schema takes that pair (few do).
• Lipsync and dubbing: see the next section.
• Upscaling up to 4K.
• Deterministic utilities (trim, split, resize, effects, grading, frame extraction, background removal): see scenario-video-editing. Assembling a finished cut: see scenario-video-assembly.
• Extending a clip from its last frame, on a dedicated extend member or by chaining first-frame runs past any member's duration cap: asset_get the rendered clip and pass its lastFrame asset id as the next run's first frame, writing that prompt from what the frame shows (positions, facing, the camera's side, so screen direction survives the seam) rather than from the plan, since renders drift from it; join the runs with model_scenario-video-concat (a fixed id, for the same reason as the cut and split tools; hard cuts by default, per scenario-video-assembly).

Dubbing is not lipsync

Dubbing translates the speech and keeps each speaker's own voice, tone, and timing. It does not move the mouth, so a dubbed talking head still has lips forming the original language. Three steps, after any trim the limits below require:

1. Dub. Takes the clip as file and a required targetLang from the schema's allowed values. Omit sourceLang to auto-detect, since the value that means auto differs between models. When a brand or name must survive translation, pick a hit whose schema carries keyterms, as not all do; where it is array: true, pass ["Scenario"] even for one term.
2. Extract. Dubbing returns a dubbed video, not a bare track, and lipsync wants an audio asset. Pull the speech out with model_scenario-audio-extract, a fixed first-party id: Scenario's single deterministic tool for the operation, so discovery would only re-derive it.
3. Lipsync. Pass the dubbed video together with its extracted track. No schema says whether the input's own audio survives, so listen to the output before shipping. The clip and the track are separate fields, video/audio on most hits and videoUrl/audioFile on others. A duration-mismatch control is not universal: where present it is syncMode or lipsyncMode (cut_off, loop, bounce, silence, remap) with a per-model default, and there loop and bounce extend the shorter stream while cut_off ends at it; elsewhere a loop boolean loops the audio instead.

Judge a localized talking head on a stylized character before promising it on a photoreal one.

Duration limits

Where a model bounds input length it rejects rather than trims: a 30.08 second reference against a 30.0 second limit fails the whole run, with the error naming both numbers. A clean dry_run prices the payload and is not proof it clears a ceiling: read the input's duration off asset_get and compare it to the cap yourself. A ceiling can be a typed max_duration on the file field, prose in that field's description, or absent, so check both, on the audio input as readily as the video. When one applies, trim with the deterministic cut or split tools (model_scenario-video-cut, model_scenario-video-split, fixed ids for the same reason as the extractor above) before the run that enforces it, and before any step whose output must match the trimmed footage, such as a dub. Land inside the stated range, not on its edge.

Floors bind as hard as caps. The shortest clip a member renders is in its schema, as a min on a numeric duration, as the smallest of a duration enum's allowed_values, or as a fixed length when the field is absent (5 seconds on one reference-conditioned member, 1 or 2 on others at authoring time), so a 1 to 2 second VFX element is not a duration: 1 request on the first pick: recommend with the clip length in the user's words, read the floor off the schema, and when nothing goes low enough render the shortest clip and trim it with model_scenario-video-cut, or ask for several events in one clip ("three explosions, one after another") and split them with model_scenario-video-split. Extending the other way, past a max, is the last-frame chain under Editing existing footage.