▶ Short-Form Video · Breaking-News Flash

MARKETS FLASH the broadcast reel

Cinematic trading-floor b-roll for the feel, a pixel-perfect timed-HTML broadcast UI for the facts. The ticker isn't melted into a frame — it's a vector-crisp CSS scroll, with a flashing BREAKING pill, a live stat box, and per-beat lower-third headlines, over the whole reel. Headline → context → developing beats → outlook, narrated like an anchor over an urgent bed. Native 9:16, 28s.

format
9:16 vertical · 1080×1920
runtime
28s · VO + music
b-roll
Ken-Burns stills fallback
overlay
hyperframes-render
topic
Markets Flash (neutral)
The hybrid that gives AI b-roll a real news graphics package. No text-to-video model can render a legible ticker or a clean ▲ +1.2% stat box — it melts the numbers into glyph soup. So this playbook never asks it to. The AI generates the cinematic b-roll; a single agent-authored HTML document — driven by CSS @keyframes — composites the flashing BREAKING pill, the channel header, the live stat box, per-beat lower-third headlines, and a scrolling ticker over the top. The pixels carry mood; the HTML carries the broadcast UI. Topic and disclaimer are deliberately neutral — this is a format demo, not live footage.

Finished reel — the stitched news flash

Cinematic markets base (Ken-Burns slow-zoom on 9:16 keyframes) + a crisp hyperframes-render broadcast overlay · VO + ducked urgent bed · 28s.

Two layers, one reel — why the hybrid works

Every frame is two things stacked: an AI-generated cinematic plate, and a deterministic broadcast-UI overlay. Each does the job the other can't.

Layer 1 · AI b-roll

The feel

Cinematic markets keyframes from generate_project — trading floors, skylines, abstract data, on-policy subjects with NO real people that sidestep fal's content filter — brought to life with slow motion. Carries the urgency and the scale, what AI video does well. On this reel the motion came from the Ken-Burns stills fallback (ffmpeg zoompan), because fal's video tier was flaky that day. Honest, reliable, exactly 9:16.

Layer 2 · hyperframes-render

The broadcast UI

One agent-authored HTML document composited over the whole base reel via hyperframes-render: a flashing red BREAKING pill, a "MARKETS FLASH" header, a live S&P 500 ▲ +1.2% stat box, per-beat lower-third headlines that swap at their timestamps, a CSS scrolling ticker (AAPL / NVDA / XOM with green/red deltas), and an "Illustrative — AI-generated b-roll, not live footage" disclaimer. Vector-crisp text AI video can never render legibly.

How it was made — the 6-step recipe

01 · SCRIPT
Headline → context → beats → outlook
One script serves double duty: the anchor VO AND the on-screen lower-third headlines. The cold lead, the context, two developing beats, the "what to watch" close.
02 · B-ROLL
generate_project · 9:16 markets
One cinematic keyframe per beat, aspect_ratio:"9:16". Image-led, on-policy markets subjects — NO real people, NO violence — they sidestep fal's content filter.
03 · MOTION
ltx-q-i2v · or Ken-Burns fallback
Slow cinematic push via ltx-q-i2v — or, when fal's video tier is flaky, ffmpeg zoompan slow-zoom cover-cropped to 1080×1920. This reel used the Ken-Burns fallback.
04 · AUDIO
chatterbox-tts + music
An authoritative anchor VO from chatterbox-tts over an urgent instrumental bed from music, mixed with the VO above a ducked bed.
05 · STITCH
ffmpeg-concat
Concat the clips into a base reel and mux the audio. This is the plate the broadcast overlay sits on.
06 · OVERLAY
hyperframes-render · duration 28
One timed broadcast-UI HTML doc over the whole base reel. 28s exceeds create_media's 15s cap, so the cap is called directly with duration:28.

The overlay HTML — a broadcast package on a CSS timeline

The whole hybrid layer is one HTML file. The BREAKING pill pulses on a steps animation, lower thirds are staggered by animation-delay to land on their beats, and the ticker is a single linear scroll. Pixel-perfect, every time — never baked into a generated image.

/* flashing BREAKING pill + per-beat lower thirds + scrolling ticker */
.breaking { background:#d2222d; animation:flash 1s steps(2,end) infinite; }
@keyframes flash { 50% { opacity:.35; } }
.lt { position:absolute; bottom:230px; opacity:0; }
@keyframes show { 0%{opacity:0} 8%,92%{opacity:1} 100%{opacity:0} }
.l1 { animation:show 9s  0s forwards; }   /* 0–9s   */
.l3 { animation:show 10s 18s forwards; }  /* 18–28s */
.ticker .run { animation:scroll 18s linear infinite; }
<div class="stat">S&P 500 <span class="up">▲ +1.2%</span></div>

Pipeline trace — the cap chain this reel ran

Wave 1 — beat keyframes 5 × generate_project aspect=9:16, cinematic markets, on-policy prompts (no people) 5/5 done
Wave 2 — motion (Ken-Burns fallback — fal video tier flaky) 5 × ffmpeg zoompan slow-zoom, cover-crop 4:3 → 1080×1920 5 × ~6s clips
Wave 3 — audio + stitch chatterbox-tts anchor VO music urgent news bed ffmpeg-audio-mix (VO over ducked bed) ffmpeg-concat clips + muxed audio 28s base reel
Wave 4 — the broadcast layer hyperframes-render timed broadcast-UI HTML, duration:28 (cap called directly — exceeds 15s create_media cap) final reel

Tested verdict — honest, not inflated

~93% Ken-Burns base · hyperframes-render broadcast overlay broadcast-convincing · flaky video tier

The overlay is the win. The BREAKING pill, the live stat box, the per-beat lower thirds, and the scrolling ticker land pixel-perfect on the CSS timeline — the UI reads as a real news graphics package, in a way no text-to-video model can produce. The hybrid does exactly what it promises: feel from the pixels, broadcast UI from the HTML.

The base used the Ken-Burns stills fallback, not live i2v — fal's video tier was flaky and slow that day. That's the honest mitigation, not a regression: ffmpeg zoompan cover-cropped to 1080×1920 is reliable and exactly 9:16. When the video tier is healthy, ltx-q-i2v (or kling / pixverse / cosmos-3-i2v) gives true camera motion.

Neutral topic ("Markets Flash") and the on-screen "Illustrative — AI-generated b-roll, not live footage" disclaimer are deliberate — no real people, no likeness or misinformation risk. This is the right ceiling for the format: a convincing broadcast UI over honest, on-policy b-roll. Pairs with the live-stream-commentary playbook.

Reproduce this — the playbook is open

Built from the breaking-news-flash playbook — point it at any neutral, on-policy topic (a market move, a tech launch, a weather system) and it writes the headline → context → developing beats → outlook, renders 9:16 cinematic b-roll, and lays a pixel-perfect broadcast-UI overlay — BREAKING pill, stat box, lower thirds, ticker, disclaimer — on top. Keep the ticker and the stat in the HTML, never in the image.