How to add a review card overlay with Claude

A white review card with five gold stars, a short customer quote and the reviewer's name slides in from the left and settles across the lower third.

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 review card overlay to input.mp4
    Quote: My skin has never looked this bright. Obsessed!
    Name, byline: Jess M., Verified buyer

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 review card overlay 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
QUOTEMy skin has never looked this bright. Obsessed!The review text.
NAME, BYLINEJess M., Verified buyerWho wrote it, and the grey line after the name.
STARS5Gold stars out of five.
START0.6Second the card starts sliding in.
SLIDE0.45Seconds the slide takes.
TOP0.66Card top edge as a share of the frame height.
GOLD(255, 185, 0)Star color.

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 customer review card to input.mp4. Draw a white rounded rectangle 84% of the frame width (corner radius 3.4% of the width) with a soft black drop shadow, centered across, its top edge 66% down the frame. Inside, with a padding of 5% of the frame width: a row of five gold (255, 185, 0) five-pointed stars, each 5.6% of the frame width across; below them the quote “My skin has never looked this bright. Obsessed!” in bold near-black (25, 25, 30) text 4.8% of the frame width tall, wrapped to the card; below that “— Jess M.” in bold near-black and “Verified buyer” in grey (130, 130, 140), both 3.6% of the frame width tall. Nothing shows before 0.6 seconds; then the card slides in from fully off the left edge to its centered spot over 0.45 seconds with an ease-out (cubic), and stays to the end. 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 review-card-overlay.py and run:

python3 review-card-overlay.py input.mp4 output.mp4
Show the script
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Review card overlay: a white customer review card with five gold stars, a quote and a name slides in from the left.

Usage: python3 review-card-overlay.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, ImageFilter, ImageFont

QUOTE = "My skin has never looked this bright. Obsessed!"  # the review text
NAME = "Jess M."         # who wrote it
BYLINE = "Verified buyer"  # small grey line after the name
STARS = 5                # gold stars out of five
START = 0.6              # second the card starts sliding in
SLIDE = 0.45             # seconds the slide takes
WIDTH = 0.84             # card width as a share of the frame width (centered across)
TOP = 0.66               # card top edge, as a share of the frame height
GOLD = (255, 185, 0)     # star color
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 wrap(draw, text, font, width):
    lines = [""]
    for word in text.split():
        trial = f"{lines[-1]} {word}".strip()
        if draw.textlength(trial, font=font) <= width or not lines[-1]:
            lines[-1] = trial
        else:
            lines.append(word)
    return lines


def star(draw, cx, cy, r, fill):
    points = [(cx + (r if i % 2 == 0 else r * 0.45) * math.sin(i * math.pi / 5),
               cy - (r if i % 2 == 0 else r * 0.45) * math.cos(i * math.pi / 5)) for i in range(10)]
    draw.polygon(points, fill=fill)


def card():
    """The review card with a soft shadow, as an RGBA image."""
    cw, pad = round(w * WIDTH), round(w * 0.05)
    quote_font = ImageFont.truetype(FONT_FILE, round(w * 0.048))
    name_font = ImageFont.truetype(FONT_FILE, round(w * 0.036))
    measure = ImageDraw.Draw(Image.new("RGBA", (1, 1)))
    lines = wrap(measure, f"\u201c{QUOTE}\u201d", quote_font, cw - 2 * pad)
    r, line_h = round(w * 0.028), round(quote_font.size * 1.3)
    ch = pad + 2 * r + round(pad * 0.6) + line_h * len(lines) + round(pad * 0.4) + name_font.size + pad

    shadow = round(w * 0.03)
    img = Image.new("RGBA", (cw + 2 * shadow, ch + 2 * shadow))
    shade = Image.new("RGBA", img.size)
    ImageDraw.Draw(shade).rounded_rectangle([shadow, shadow + 6, shadow + cw, shadow + ch + 6], r * 1.2, fill=(0, 0, 0, 110))
    img.alpha_composite(shade.filter(ImageFilter.GaussianBlur(shadow / 2)))
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
    draw.rounded_rectangle([shadow, shadow, shadow + cw, shadow + ch], r * 1.2, fill="white")

    x, y = shadow + pad, shadow + pad
    for i in range(5):
        star(draw, x + r + i * r * 2.4, y + r, r, GOLD if i < STARS else (215, 215, 215))
    y += 2 * r + round(pad * 0.6)
    for line in lines:
        draw.text((x, y), line, font=quote_font, fill=(25, 25, 30))
        y += line_h
    y += round(pad * 0.4)
    draw.text((x, y), f"\u2014 {NAME}", font=name_font, fill=(25, 25, 30))
    draw.text((x + draw.textlength(f"\u2014 {NAME}  ", font=name_font), y), BYLINE, font=name_font, fill=(130, 130, 140))
    return img, shadow


def overlay(t):
    img = Image.new("RGBA", (w, h))
    if t >= START:
        p = min((t - START) / SLIDE, 1)
        ease = 1 - (1 - p) ** 3
        x = round(-full.width + (w + full.width) / 2 * ease)  # off the left edge -> centered
        img.paste(full, (x, round(h * TOP) - shadow))  # paste clips the part still off screen
    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)
full, shadow = card()
render(src, out)

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