What happens to your line
The topic goes to a language model that drafts narration sized to the length you chose. It is briefed to write for listening rather than reading: short sentences, one idea at a time, an opening that gets to the point. The draft is then divided into five to eight beats.
Every beat gets its own picture, planned from what that beat says and drawn in the look you picked. A narrator voice records the whole script, the recording is measured word by word, and the captions are timed from those measurements. Everything is cut together into a 1080×1920 MP4 and saved to My shorts.
How to phrase a topic that works
A topic is a brief, so the more specific it is, the more specific the short will be.
- Give it an angle. “Why the Leaning Tower of Pisa stopped tilting further” gives the writer far more to work with than “Pisa”.
- Questions make good topics, because a short that answers a question has a built-in ending.
- Lists work when you name the number: “Four foods that were once medicines” sets the shape of the script.
- Skip breaking news. Drafts come from general knowledge, so very recent events may be missing or out of date.
Choosing a length
Quick runs to about thirty seconds over five beats, Standard to about forty-five over six, and Extended to about a minute over eight. The length is a ceiling rather than a target, so most shorts finish a few seconds early. Quick suits a single surprising fact; Extended has room for a small story with a turn in the middle.
Read it before it goes out
A drafted script can contain mistakes, just like a hurried human one. Each short has a page that lists every beat beside its picture, so checking the narration takes a minute. If a line needs fixing, copy the corrected text into script mode and make it again; scripts are read word for word.