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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 progress bar to input.mp4 Fill color: (255, 59, 92) Bar thickness as a share of the frame height: 0.012
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 progress bar 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 |
|---|---|---|
COLOR | (255, 59, 92) | Fill color. |
HEIGHT | 0.012 | Bar thickness as a share of the frame height. |
In other editors
From each editor’s own help pages, in our words. We haven’t run these ourselves.
Built in: Progress Bars
- Click Video in the left toolbar, then open Elements.
- In the Progress Bars category, click a style to add it.
- Drag it on the timeline for start time; trim handles set its duration.
- Drag it on the canvas to position it, and change its colors.
Source: How to add a progress bar (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.
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Add a progress bar to input.mp4: a bar along the very top, 1.2% of the frame height, in (255, 59, 92) over a faint white track, filling from left to right so it is full on the last frame. 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 progress-bar.py and run:
python3 progress-bar.py input.mp4 output.mp4Show the script
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Progress bar: a thin bar along the top edge fills from left to right over the length of the video.
Usage: python3 progress-bar.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
COLOR = (255, 59, 92) # fill color
TRACK = (255, 255, 255, 90) # the unfilled part (last number is opacity, 0-255)
HEIGHT = 0.012 # bar thickness as a share of the frame height
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 overlay(t):
img = Image.new("RGBA", (w, h))
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
bar = max(2, round(h * HEIGHT))
draw.rectangle([0, 0, w, bar], fill=TRACK)
filled = round(w * min(1, t / duration))
if filled:
draw.rectangle([0, 0, filled - 1, bar], fill=COLOR)
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)
render(src, out)
