Remotion

Remotion renders React components to video. Typical use: short animated explainers (30–120 s) embedded as hero elements in articles or landing pages.

Composition setup

Register in src/Root.tsx:

<Composition
  id="MyCompositionId"
  component={MyComponent}
  defaultProps={{}}
  durationInFrames={900}
  fps={30}
  width={1920}
  height={1080}
/>

Standard spec: 1920×1080, 30 fps. Duration: 30 s = 900 frames, 60 s = 1800 frames.

Use interpolate with extrapolateLeft/Right: 'clamp' for all animations. Crossfade scenes with a 10–12 frame overlap.

Render pipeline

Always render a ProRes master first, then derive MP4 from it — never render MP4 directly (lower quality, no intermediate for re-encoding):

npm run render:final -- <CompositionId>

Expected output in out/<CompositionId>/:

Typical sizes for a 30 s animation: 720p MP4 ≈ 500 KB–2 MB. No CDN needed below ~4 MB.

Poster conversion

PNG frames are large (600 KB–1 MB). Convert to WebP immediately:

cwebp -q 85 out/<CompositionId>/poster-720p.png -o out/<CompositionId>/poster-720p.webp

Typical WebP result: 15–40 KB.

Astro frontmatter integration

Add video fields to the content schema (content.config.ts):

heroVideo:       z.string().optional(),
heroVideoPoster: z.string().optional(),

Reference in MDX frontmatter:

heroVideo: '/videos/<CompositionId>/720p.mp4'
heroVideoPoster: '/videos/<CompositionId>/poster-720p.webp'

Keep a separate teaserImage for OG/social — video poster is not a substitute.

Embedding in Astro

Minimal inline embed:

{heroVideo && (
  <video
    src={heroVideo}
    poster={heroVideoPoster}
    autoplay muted loop playsinline
    aria-label="Animated explainer"
  />
)}

For a reusable component, accept src, poster, title, and an optional class prop. Add prefers-reduced-motion support:

<video
  class:list={['hero-video', className]}
  src={src}
  poster={poster}
  autoplay={!prefersReducedMotion}
  muted loop playsinline
  aria-label={title}
/>

What NOT to add

• VideoObject structured data — only useful when video is the primary page content, not a decorative header element.
• Captions — not needed for silent/music-only animation-only videos.
• WebM variant — H.264 MP4 with faststart covers all modern browsers.
• Cloudflare Stream or similar CDN — only necessary above ~4 MB per video.
• Direct MP4 render — always go through a ProRes master.

Narrative structure for explainers

1. Hook — show the visible symptom or the unseen mechanism.
2. Mechanics — reveal the internal structure (loop, pipeline, decision tree).
3. Contrast or failure case — contrast sharpens the aha moment.
4. Aha — one consequence the viewer didn't know before.
5. Close — what changes now.

Scene pacing: fade in at frame 0, fade out at 12 frames before cut, crossfade 12 frames into next scene.