> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.premierecopilot.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Vibe Kinetic
> AI kinetic text: animated captions and hooks rendered from your own words, placed on your timeline.
Vibe Kinetic listens to your sequence, picks the sentences worth putting on screen, art-directs them (typography, colour, animation, word-level highlights) and renders each one as an **animated clip with a transparent background**, placed automatically on your timeline.
It is not a subtitle tool. It writes **short on-screen hooks** — the punchline, the number, the payoff — the way a motion designer would, not a word-for-word transcript.
Works in **Premiere Pro** and **DaVinci Resolve**.
## Quick Start
Open the **Tools Menu** and select **Vibe Kinetic**.
Click a card in **Style presets** — it fills the **Brief** box with a ready-made style description you can then edit.
Describe the look and the editorial intent in plain language. Leave it empty for the clean default look.
**Texts per minute** = how many captions appear. **Seconds on screen** = how long each one stays.
Click **Generate captions**. The run modal shows four steps: audio export, curation, render, placement.
You need a **saved project** and an **active sequence with audio**. The tool reads the whole sequence, not just the part around the playhead.
## What you get on the timeline
Each caption arrives as its own **video clip with alpha**, stacked above your footage and cut to the exact in/out point the AI chose.
These are rendered clips, **not** Essential Graphics / Text layers. You can move, trim, delete or re-order them freely, but you **cannot retype the text** inside Premiere or Resolve. To change wording or style, adjust the brief and run again.
Rendered files are written to the **download folder** before import, so you keep a copy of every clip.
## Main Settings
| Setting | Range | What it does |
| --------------------- | --------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Brief** | free text | Describes the look *and* the editorial intent. The single most powerful control. |
| **Style presets** | 6 cards | Click to load a proven brief into the box. Fully editable afterwards. |
| **Texts per minute** | 2–15 | How dense the captions are. Default **8**. |
| **Seconds on screen** | 2–10 | Target display time per caption. Default **2**. |
| **Download folder** | folder | Where the rendered clips are stored. Defaults to your project folder. |
### Texts per minute
This is a **target density**, not a quota. The AI reasons in *ideas*, so it will only place a caption where there is something worth highlighting — a quiet or repetitive passage will get fewer.
Sparse, editorial. Long-form, interviews, documentary, corporate.
Balanced. YouTube talking-head, tutorials, podcasts clips. **Start here.**
Dense, high-energy. Reels, TikTok, Shorts, fast-cut promos.
Above 15 a caption would live less than four seconds on screen and nobody can read it — that's why the slider stops there.
### Seconds on screen
This is the **target** duration. A caption is automatically shortened when the next one arrives sooner, and captions that would end up too short to be readable are dropped rather than flashed.
* **2–3 s** — punchy, rhythmic, matches fast dense edits. Best default.
* **4–6 s** — the viewer has time to read a longer line. Good for stats, quotes, definitions.
* **7–10 s** — near-permanent lower third. Only useful at very low density, otherwise captions collide and get trimmed anyway.
Density and duration interact. High density + long duration = the duration wins on paper but gets clipped in practice. If you want long-lived captions, lower the density.
## Advanced Settings
Advanced is **off by default**, and that is a real mode — not just hidden fields.
The AI art-directs everything: it derives the palette and the mood from what is actually being said, varies placement per caption, and uses a font auto-detected on your machine.
Your palette, your placement and your font pool are respected. The AI still composes hierarchy, highlights and animation — but inside your constraints.
### Color palette
Four slots, plus five ready-made palettes.
| Slot | Typical role |
| ------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Primary** | The body of the text — the colour most words will be. |
| **Secondary** | The accent: highlighted keywords, the payoff word. |
| **Third** | Secondary accent / a second line in a pairing. |
| **Fourth** | Support tone — muted lead-ins, decorations, panel tints. |
Fill **Primary + Secondary** and leave the rest empty if you only care about "white text, one brand-coloured keyword". Filling all four does not make the result busier — it just gives the art director more room.
Legibility is protected automatically: a colour that would vanish on its own background gets corrected. If your exact brand hex comes back slightly adjusted, that is why — pair it with a panel/box in the brief to keep it untouched.
### Placement
| Value | Behaviour | Use it when |
| ---------- | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Auto** | The AI varies the position caption by caption. | You want the composition to breathe and follow the frame. |
| **Top** | Every caption locked to the upper zone. | Subject's face or a lower-third graphic occupies the bottom. |
| **Center** | Every caption locked to the middle. | Full-screen statement style, B-roll montage, no talking head. |
| **Bottom** | Every caption locked to the lower zone. | Classic. Safest for readability. |
For vertical social exports, **Center** or **Top** is usually safer: platform UI (captions, username, buttons) covers the bottom of the frame.
### Fonts
The dropdown lists the fonts **installed on your machine**, and the exact font file is sent to the renderer so what you see is what you get. You can add **up to 3**.
* **1 font** — the safest, most coherent result.
* **2 fonts** — enables *pairing*: a small lead-in line in one face and a big payoff line in another. This is what makes a caption look designed rather than typed.
* **3 fonts** — extra material for the art director to choose from; useful when you're not sure which one fits your footage.
Typography stays **consistent across the whole video**: whatever the AI settles on for the first captions is applied to all of them, so the look never drifts halfway through. Multiple fonts create contrast *inside* a caption (line 1 vs line 2), not a different font every five seconds.
Pick a **heavy display or condensed** face for the payoff line and a **regular sans** for the lead-in. Pairing two similar sans faces produces contrast so weak it reads as a mistake.
### Download folder
Defaults to your **project folder** (marked `project`). Change it if your project lives on a slow network drive — rendering writes one file per caption, and a fast local disk keeps import snappy. **Reset** puts it back to the project folder.
## Writing a Good Brief
The brief is read as **art direction**, so describe what you want to *see*, not what you want the tool to *do*.
### What works
* **The container:** *"Put every caption on a solid white rounded card with generous padding and a soft shadow."*
* **The typography:** *"Bold white uppercase condensed text, tight tracking, sentence case for the lead-in."*
* **The composition:** *"Exactly two lines: a small lowercase lead-in, then a payoff about twice the size, lines almost touching."*
* **The motion:** *"Words rise one by one with a gentle ease-out, no scale change, no rotation."*
* **The restraint:** *"No outline, no glow, no tilt, nothing else on screen."*
* **The editorial intent:** *"Only highlight actionable advice and numbers. Skip pleasantries and transitions."*
* **The tone of the words:** *"Rewrite what I say into short punchy hooks, never full sentences."*
### What doesn't work
* **A manual list of timecodes or exact sentences** — the AI chooses the moments itself from what is said. If you already know the exact texts and timings, use the **Copilot** instead (see below).
* **Asking for more or fewer captions** — that's the *Texts per minute* slider.
* **Asking for a longer display time** — that's the *Seconds on screen* slider.
* **Asking for a font you didn't select** — only fonts installed and picked in Advanced are available.
* **Asking for images, logos, icons or video inside a caption** — the engine renders type, panels and effects, nothing else.
* **Vague vibes alone** (*"make it cool"*) — you'll get the default look. Name a colour, a weight, a shape, a motion.
### Recommended pattern
> *"\[Container]. \[Typography and case]. \[Composition / number of lines]. \[Motion and rhythm]. \[What to avoid]. \[What to highlight editorially]."*
**Example:**
> *"No box. Bold white uppercase condensed text in the lower third with a very discreet halo. One line only, never stacked. Words rise gently one by one, no scale, no rotation. Highlight only numbers and product names in a saturated accent. Nothing else on screen."*
Start from a **style preset**, run once, then edit two or three words of the brief and run again. Iterating on a working brief beats writing a perfect one from scratch.
## Style Presets
Clicking a preset only **fills the brief box** — nothing is locked. Edit it, merge two of them, or delete half a sentence.
| Preset | Look |
| ------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Institutional** | White rounded card, dark text, one line, soft shadow. Corporate, clean, very legible. |
| **Retro Button** | Sky-blue card, hard offset shadow, heavy black uppercase. Pops in as one block. |
| **Cinematic** | No box, white condensed uppercase in the lower third, discreet halo, slow restrained motion. |
| **Apple Message** | Blue iMessage-style bubble, white conversational text, springy pop-in. |
| **Grid + Pairing** | Paper card hugging the text, two lines, two fonts, a headline plus a handwritten accent. |
| **White Pairing** | No box, pure white with a soft bloom, small lead-in over a large uppercase payoff, word-by-word rise. |
## Using Vibe Kinetic from the Copilot
You can also ask the **Copilot** in chat to place animated text — it uses the same engine, but skips transcription and curation because *you* supply the words.
> *"Add kinetic text: 'ONLY 3 STEPS' at 4s, 'STEP ONE' at 9s, 'STEP TWO' at 15s — Apple style, white on two lines, 3 seconds each."*
What you can specify in the request:
| You provide | Notes |
| ------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **The texts and their timings** | Required. Up to 200 items. |
| **A style brief** | Same language as the panel brief. |
| **Colours** | Given as a small palette. |
| **Placement** | `auto`, `top`, `center` or `bottom`. |
| **A font** | Free-form name — it is matched to a font available on your machine or to a built-in one. |
| **A target duration** | 2–10 s, applied to any text you left open-ended. |
Ask for a font by name and you'll get the closest real match, never a missing-font error. If nothing close is installed, a sane built-in face is used instead.
## Common Pitfalls
* **No sequence audio** → nothing to analyse, no captions. The panel path needs a spoken track.
* **Project not saved** → the download folder falls back to your temp directory; rendered clips still import, but they're stored outside your project.
* **Too dense + too long** → captions overlap and get trimmed or dropped. Lower the density before raising the duration.
* **All four palette slots set to near-identical colours** → highlights become invisible. Keep one clearly contrasting accent.
* **Advanced ON with no font selected** → the Generate button stays disabled. Pick at least one font.
* **Very long sequences** take a while: one clip is rendered per caption. A one-hour interview at 8/min is roughly 500 clips.
**Recommended starting point** for a talking-head social edit: pick **White Pairing** or **Cinematic**, density **8**, duration **2 s**, Advanced **ON** with one condensed display font plus one regular sans, placement **Center** for vertical / **Bottom** for horizontal.