How to add a lower third with Claude

A white name card with a red edge slides in from the left near the bottom and stays.

Get this effect

  1. Switch to Code in your Claude Desktop App

  2. Install the skill (once)

    Show the prompt
    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/skills
  3. Ask for the effect

    Add a lower third to input.mp4
    Name: Jordan K.
    Role: Verified customer

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 lower third 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.

SettingDefaultWhat it does
NAMEJordan K.First line.
ROLEVerified customerSecond line.
START0.5Second the card starts sliding in.
SLIDE0.4Seconds the slide takes.

In other editors

From each editor’s own help pages, in our words. We haven’t run these ourselves.

Built in: Lower Third Maker

  1. Upload your video, or start from a lower-third template.
  2. Use the Text tool to add a heading and subheading.
  3. Place them lower left or right, slightly above the bottom edge.
  4. To animate, click animations on the text and choose a style.

Source: Lower Third Maker - Add Text and Graphics (VEED), checked October 22, 2026.

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 lower third to input.mp4: a white card with a red (230, 40, 60) strip on its left edge, showing "Jordan K." in black bold and "Verified customer" in grey under it, sliding in from off the left edge at 0.5 seconds over 0.4 seconds (fast then slowing), stopping 5% in from the left with its top 80% of the way down. Use Python with Pillow to draw it and ffmpeg to put it on the video (don't rely on ffmpeg's drawtext filter), keep the audio, and save it as output.mp4.

Run it without Claude

This is the exact script we tested. Save it as lower-third.py and run:

python3 lower-third.py input.mp4 output.mp4
Show the script
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Lower third: a name card slides in from the left edge near the bottom of the frame and stays.

Usage: python3 lower-third.py input.mp4 output.mp4
Needs ffmpeg and Pillow (pip install pillow).
"""
import json
import math
import subprocess
import sys
from pathlib import Path

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont

NAME = "Jordan K."
ROLE = "Verified customer"
START = 0.5              # second the card starts sliding in
SLIDE = 0.4              # seconds the slide takes
Y = 0.80                 # top of the card (0 = top, 1 = bottom)
ACCENT = (230, 40, 60)   # color of the strip on the card's left edge
FONTS = ["/System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/Arial Bold.ttf",     # macOS
         "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf",  # Linux
         "C:/Windows/Fonts/arialbd.ttf"]                          # Windows
FONT_FILE = next((f for f in FONTS if Path(f).exists()), None) or sys.exit("No bold font found: add one to FONTS")



def card():
    big = ImageFont.truetype(FONT_FILE, round(w * 0.06))
    small = ImageFont.truetype(FONT_FILE, round(w * 0.036))
    pad, strip = round(w * 0.03), round(w * 0.018)
    width = round(max(big.getlength(NAME), small.getlength(ROLE))) + 2 * pad + strip
    height = big.size + small.size + 3 * pad // 2 + pad // 2
    img = Image.new("RGBA", (width, height))
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
    draw.rectangle([0, 0, width, height], fill="white")
    draw.rectangle([0, 0, strip, height], fill=ACCENT)
    draw.text((strip + pad, pad), NAME, font=big, fill="black")
    draw.text((strip + pad, pad + big.size + pad // 2), ROLE, font=small, fill=(90, 90, 90))
    return img


def overlay(t):
    img = Image.new("RGBA", (w, h))
    if t >= START:
        p = min(1, (t - START) / SLIDE)
        p = 1 - (1 - p) ** 3  # fast at first, gentle as it lands
        margin = round(w * 0.05)
        x = round(-panel.width + (panel.width + margin) * p)
        img.paste(panel, (x, round(h * Y)))
    return img


def probe(path):
    info = json.loads(subprocess.check_output(["ffprobe", "-v", "error", "-select_streams", "v:0", "-show_entries",
                                               "stream=width,height,r_frame_rate:format=duration", "-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), float(info["format"]["duration"])


def render(src, out):
    """Draw overlay(t) on every frame of src and save to out, keeping the audio."""
    ff = subprocess.Popen(["ffmpeg", "-y", "-v", "error", "-i", src,
                           "-f", "rawvideo", "-pix_fmt", "rgba", "-s", f"{w}x{h}", "-r", rate, "-i", "-",
                           "-filter_complex", "[0:v][1:v]overlay=shortest=1,format=yuv420p[v]",
                           "-map", "[v]", "-map", "0:a?", "-c:v", "libx264", "-crf", "18", "-c:a", "copy", out],
                          stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
    for i in range(math.ceil(duration * fps)):
        ff.stdin.write(overlay(i / fps).tobytes())
    ff.stdin.close()
    if ff.wait():
        sys.exit("ffmpeg failed")


src, out = sys.argv[1:3]
w, h, rate, fps, duration = probe(src)
panel = card()
render(src, out)

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