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Install the skill (once)
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Install the Recharm video effects skill: download https://recharm-growth-staging.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/website/downloads/recharm-video-effects.zip and unzip it into ~/.claude/skillsAsk for the effect
Add a blur-to-focus reveal to input.mp4 Starting blur radius as a share of the frame width (0.05 is 27 pixels on a 540-wide video): 0.05 Seconds the opening stays fully blurred: 0.3
Several videos, several effects, one ask
Put your clips in the folder, mention them with @, and ask for everything at once. Claude runs one tested script after another on each clip, then joins them.
Add a blur-to-focus reveal to @clip1.mp4, put a sale badge on @clip2.mp4, give @clip3.mp4 a VHS look, then join all three with crossfades.
Settings you can change
Ask Claude to change any of these, or edit them at the top of the script.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
BLUR | 0.05 | Starting blur radius as a share of the frame width (0.05 is 27 pixels on a 540-wide video). |
HOLD | 0.3 | Seconds the opening stays fully blurred. |
FOCUS | 1.3 | Second the picture is fully sharp. |
Without the skill
Don’t want to install the skill? Paste this prompt into Claude Code and Claude writes the script itself.
Show the prompt
Add a blur-to-focus reveal to the start of input.mp4: the first 0.3 seconds are fully blurred with a Gaussian blur of sigma 27 pixels (5% of the 540-pixel frame width) over the whole frame, then the blur eases out (sigma = 27 x (1 - p)^3, where p goes from 0 at 0.3 seconds to 1 at 1.3 seconds) so the picture is completely sharp from 1.3 seconds and untouched after that. Don't darken, fade or zoom the frame. Use Python with OpenCV (cv2.GaussianBlur) on each frame and ffmpeg to read and write the video, keep the size, frame rate (30fps, H.264 yuv420p) and audio the same, and save it as output.mp4.Run it without Claude
This is the exact script we tested. Save it as blur-to-focus-reveal.py and run:
python3 blur-to-focus-reveal.py input.mp4 output.mp4Show the script
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Blur-to-focus reveal: the video opens as a heavy blur and pulls into sharp focus over its first second.
Usage: python3 blur-to-focus-reveal.py input.mp4 output.mp4
Needs ffmpeg, OpenCV and numpy (pip install opencv-python-headless numpy).
"""
import json
import subprocess
import sys
import cv2
import numpy as np
BLUR = 0.05 # starting blur radius (Gaussian sigma) as a share of the frame width
HOLD = 0.3 # seconds the opening stays fully blurred
FOCUS = 1.3 # second the picture is fully sharp
def sigma(t):
"""Blur radius in pixels at time t: full until HOLD, easing out to zero at FOCUS."""
p = min(max((t - HOLD) / (FOCUS - HOLD), 0), 1)
return BLUR * w * (1 - p) ** 3
def probe(path):
info = json.loads(subprocess.check_output(["ffprobe", "-v", "error", "-select_streams", "v:0", "-show_entries",
"stream=width,height,r_frame_rate", "-of", "json", path]))
s = info["streams"][0]
num, den = s["r_frame_rate"].split("/")
return s["width"], s["height"], s["r_frame_rate"], float(num) / float(den)
src, out = sys.argv[1:3]
w, h, rate, fps = probe(src)
reader = subprocess.Popen(["ffmpeg", "-v", "error", "-i", src, "-f", "rawvideo", "-pix_fmt", "rgb24", "-"],
stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
writer = subprocess.Popen(["ffmpeg", "-y", "-v", "error", "-f", "rawvideo", "-pix_fmt", "rgb24", "-s", f"{w}x{h}",
"-r", rate, "-i", "-", "-i", src, "-map", "0:v", "-map", "1:a?", "-c:v", "libx264",
"-crf", "18", "-pix_fmt", "yuv420p", "-c:a", "copy", "-shortest", out],
stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
i = 0
while True:
buf = reader.stdout.read(w * h * 3)
if len(buf) < w * h * 3:
break
img = np.frombuffer(buf, np.uint8).reshape(h, w, 3)
s = sigma(i / fps)
if s > 0.3:
img = cv2.GaussianBlur(img, (0, 0), s, borderType=cv2.BORDER_REFLECT)
writer.stdin.write(img.tobytes())
i += 1
writer.stdin.close()
if reader.wait() or writer.wait():
sys.exit("ffmpeg failed")
