- name
- ppt-audio-to-video
- description
- Convert narration audio plus slide decks into a narrated video. Use when the user has an audio-only
mp4/m4a/mp3/wavand appt/pptx/pdfdeck, and needs slide images, transcript extraction, slide timing planning, or finalmp4rendering withwhisper-cppandffmpeg.
PPT Audio To Video
Use this skill when the source video has narration audio but no usable slide visuals, and the final deliverable should be a slide-based lecture video.
Resolve bundled scripts relative to this skill directory. If the runtime has already opened this SKILL.md, prefer paths like scripts/extract_slide_outline.py and scripts/render_from_timing_csv.py instead of machine-specific absolute paths.
Core workflow
- Inventory inputs.
- Confirm which of these exist: audio-only mp4/m4a/mp3/wav, ppt/pptx, pdf, and any pre-rendered slide images. - Prefer an existing pdf or image directory for rendering. Treat pptx as the source of slide text and as a fallback for export.
- Prepare tools.
- Required for deterministic steps: ffmpeg, ffprobe, pdftoppm. - Required for transcription: whisper-cli from whisper-cpp plus a multilingual model such as ggml-small.bin. - If only pptx exists and no pdf/images exist, prefer Keynote or PowerPoint export on macOS. Use soffice only as fallback because profile or rendering issues are common.
- Produce slide images.
- If pdf exists, render it to images:
pdftoppm -png -r 200 "$PDF" "$OUTDIR/slide"- If only pptx exists, export to pdf or slide images with Keynote or PowerPoint, then continue from pdf. - Keep slide filenames ordered and stable, such as slide-01.png, slide-02.png, ...
- Extract slide text.
- Run:
python3 scripts/extract_slide_outline.py \
--pptx "$PPTX" \
--out "$WORKDIR/slide_outline.csv"- Use the output to identify slide titles, distinctive keywords, and section changes.
- Extract clean audio for ASR.
- For audio-only mp4, extract mono wav:
ffmpeg -y -i "$AUDIO_MP4" -ar 16000 -ac 1 -c:a pcm_s16le "$WORKDIR/audio.wav"- If the source is already wav/mp3/m4a, convert to the same mono wav form if needed.
- Transcribe with
whisper-cli.
- Example:
whisper-cli -ng \
-m "$MODEL" \
-f "$WORKDIR/audio.wav" \
-l zh \
-ocsv -osrt -of "$WORKDIR/transcript"- Prefer transcript.csv for downstream parsing. transcript.srt is useful for manual review. - If GPU allocation fails on macOS, retry with -ng to force CPU mode.
- Build
slide_timings.csv.
- Do not average slide durations unless the user explicitly asks for it. - Read the transcript and slide outline together, then create a monotonic timing plan by topic changes, section boundaries, and unique keywords. - Use this schema:
slide,start_sec,end_sec,duration_sec,reason
1,0.000,15.000,15.000,opening title and agenda
2,15.000,100.000,85.000,architecture overview starts here- Keep slide numbers sequential and ensure duration_sec = end_sec - start_sec. - Validate that the last end_sec matches the audio duration or is within a small tolerance.
- Render the final video.
- Run:
python3 scripts/render_from_timing_csv.py \
--images "$SLIDE_IMAGES_DIR" \
--timings "$WORKDIR/slide_timings.csv" \
--audio "$WORKDIR/audio.wav" \
--output "$OUT_VIDEO"- The script generates an ffconcat file, validates timing continuity, and calls ffmpeg to encode the final mp4.
- Verify and iterate.
- Check output duration with ffprobe. - If a slide cuts too early or too late, edit only the affected rows in slide_timings.csv and rerun the render script. - Keep the transcript, outline, and timing CSV as reproducible working files.
Heuristics for timing alignment
- Use section-divider slides briefly. These slides usually hold for 5-20 seconds.
- Use the first segment that clearly switches topic as the next slide start.
- Prefer exact topic transitions over title-word matching. ASR often distorts proper nouns and product names.
- Let the model infer timings, but keep the render step deterministic through
slide_timings.csv. - When confidence is low, produce a first-cut video and tell the user which slide boundaries likely need review.
Common commands
Install dependencies on macOS if missing:
brew install ffmpeg poppler whisper-cppTypical multilingual model download:
mkdir -p .models
curl -L 'https://huggingface.co/ggerganov/whisper.cpp/resolve/main/ggml-small.bin' -o .models/ggml-small.binBundled scripts
scripts/extract_slide_outline.py
Extract slide text from pptx into CSV or JSON for timing analysis.
scripts/render_from_timing_csv.py
Validate a timing CSV, generate an ffconcat, and render the final video with ffmpeg.