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Video Understand

  • 8 installs
  • Updated April 14, 2026
  • heygen-com/skills-legacy

This is a copy of video-understand by heygen-com - installs and ranking accrue to the original listing.

Helps with ai & agent building tasks.

About

video-understand is a Claude Code skill for ai & agent building. It helps solo builders move faster with AI-assisted development.

  • video-understand
  • AI & Agent Building
  • AI-coding skill

Video Understand by the numbers

  • 8 all-time installs (skills.sh)
  • +1 installs in the week ending Aug 2, 2026 (Skillselion tracking)
  • Data as of Aug 2, 2026 (Skillselion catalog sync)
npx skills add https://github.com/heygen-com/skills-legacy --skill video-understand

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Listed on Skillselion
Installs8
Last updatedApril 14, 2026
Repositoryheygen-com/skills-legacy

What it does

Helps with ai & agent building tasks.

Files

SKILL.mdMarkdownGitHub ↗

video-understand

Understand video content locally using ffmpeg for frame extraction and Whisper for transcription. Fully offline, no API keys required.

Prerequisites

  • ffmpeg + ffprobe (required): brew install ffmpeg
  • openai-whisper (optional, for transcription): pip install openai-whisper

Commands

# Scene detection + transcribe (default)
python3 skills/video-understand/scripts/understand_video.py video.mp4

# Keyframe extraction
python3 skills/video-understand/scripts/understand_video.py video.mp4 -m keyframe

# Regular interval extraction
python3 skills/video-understand/scripts/understand_video.py video.mp4 -m interval

# Limit frames extracted
python3 skills/video-understand/scripts/understand_video.py video.mp4 --max-frames 10

# Use a larger Whisper model
python3 skills/video-understand/scripts/understand_video.py video.mp4 --whisper-model small

# Frames only, skip transcription
python3 skills/video-understand/scripts/understand_video.py video.mp4 --no-transcribe

# Quiet mode (JSON only, no progress)
python3 skills/video-understand/scripts/understand_video.py video.mp4 -q

# Output to file
python3 skills/video-understand/scripts/understand_video.py video.mp4 -o result.json

CLI Options

FlagDescription
videoInput video file (positional, required)
-m, --modeExtraction mode: scene (default), keyframe, interval
--max-framesMaximum frames to keep (default: 20)
--whisper-modelWhisper model size: tiny, base, small, medium, large (default: base)
--no-transcribeSkip audio transcription, extract frames only
-o, --outputWrite result JSON to file instead of stdout
-q, --quietSuppress progress messages, output only JSON

Extraction Modes

ModeHow it worksBest for
sceneDetects scene changes via ffmpeg select='gt(scene,0.3)'Most videos, varied content
keyframeExtracts I-frames (codec keyframes)Encoded video with natural keyframe placement
intervalEvenly spaced frames based on duration and max-framesFixed sampling, predictable output

If scene mode detects no scene changes, it automatically falls back to interval mode.

Output

The script outputs JSON to stdout (or file with -o). See references/output-format.md for the full schema.

{
  "video": "video.mp4",
  "duration": 18.076,
  "resolution": {"width": 1224, "height": 1080},
  "mode": "scene",
  "frames": [
    {"path": "/abs/path/frame_0001.jpg", "timestamp": 0.0, "timestamp_formatted": "00:00"}
  ],
  "frame_count": 12,
  "transcript": [
    {"start": 0.0, "end": 2.5, "text": "Hello and welcome..."}
  ],
  "text": "Full transcript...",
  "note": "Use the Read tool to view frame images for visual understanding."
}

Use the Read tool on frame image paths to visually inspect extracted frames.

References

  • references/output-format.md -- Full JSON output schema documentation

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