How to add a scrolling ticker with Claude

A yellow band appears near the bottom and "FREE SHIPPING • NEW FORMULA • BACK IN STOCK" crawls across it from right to left, looping without a gap.

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 scrolling ticker to input.mp4
    Text: FREE SHIPPING  •  NEW FORMULA  •  BACK IN STOCK  •  

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 scrolling ticker 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
TEXTFREE SHIPPING • NEW FORMULA • BACK IN STOCK • Text that scrolls, repeated end to end.
START0.5Second the band appears and the text starts entering from the right.
FADE0.2Seconds the band takes to fade in.
SPEED0.4Scroll speed, in frame widths per second.
Y0.82Band center, as a share of the frame height.
BAND0.08Band height as a share of the frame height.
SIZE0.075Text height as a share of the frame width.
COLOR(255, 210, 0)Band color.
INK(20, 20, 20)Text 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 scrolling ticker to input.mp4 (540x960). From 0.5 seconds to the end, show a full-width yellow (255, 210, 0) band 8% of the frame height tall, centered 82% down the frame, fading in over 0.2 seconds. On it, "FREE SHIPPING  •  NEW FORMULA  •  BACK IN STOCK  •  " repeated end to end in near-black (20, 20, 20) bold, text 7.5% of the frame width high and vertically centered in the band, scrolls from right to left at 40% of the frame width per second: the first letter enters at the band's right edge at 0.5 seconds and the copies follow with no gap, so the text never runs out. Nothing shows before 0.5 seconds and the rest of the frame is left as it is. 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 scrolling-ticker.py and run:

python3 scrolling-ticker.py input.mp4 output.mp4
Show the script
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Scrolling ticker: a yellow band near the bottom with black text crawling endlessly from right to left.

Usage: python3 scrolling-ticker.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

TEXT = "FREE SHIPPING  •  NEW FORMULA  •  BACK IN STOCK  •  "
START = 0.5              # second the band appears and the text starts entering from the right
FADE = 0.2               # seconds the band takes to fade in
SPEED = 0.4              # scroll speed, in frame widths per second
Y = 0.82                 # band center (0 = top, 1 = bottom)
BAND = 0.08              # band height as a share of the frame height
SIZE = 0.075             # text height as a share of the frame width
COLOR = (255, 210, 0)    # band color
INK = (20, 20, 20)       # text 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 text_strip():
    """The band as one long image: a frame width of plain band, then TEXT repeated for as far as it will scroll."""
    font = ImageFont.truetype(FONT_FILE, round(w * SIZE))
    loop = round(font.getlength(TEXT))
    copies = math.ceil(duration * SPEED * w / loop) + 1
    img = Image.new("RGBA", (w + copies * loop, round(h * BAND)), COLOR)
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
    for i in range(copies):
        draw.text((w + i * loop, img.height / 2), TEXT, font=font, anchor="lm", fill=INK)
    return img


def overlay(t):
    img = Image.new("RGBA", (w, h))
    if t < START:
        return img
    x = round((t - START) * SPEED * w)
    band = strip.crop((x, 0, x + w, strip.height))
    band.putalpha(round(255 * min((t - START) / FADE, 1)))
    img.paste(band, (0, round(h * Y - strip.height / 2)))
    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)
strip = text_strip()
render(src, out)

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