Free Video Effect
Pull-Back Reveal Effect: Your Video Was Inside the Editor All Along
The camera pulls back to show your video playing inside an editing window, with edit steps ticking off beside it.
Claude Code · Opus 5.59:16Medium
- Run the setup once
- Paste the prompt, fill in the [brackets]
- Approve the preview, get your MP4
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The prompt
effects/pull_back.py: add a "Pull-Back Reveal" effect between [START S] and [END S].
- While the video is full screen, it shrinks to 58% in 0.8 s (easeInOutQuint), and a light cream
(#F3F0E6) desktop app window appears around it:
- Window title: three colored dots + "[FILE NAME, e.g. reel-v1.mp4]" + "Assistant" on the right
- My video plays inside the window
- Under it a timeline: an audio waveform (generated from the video's real audio),
a moving playhead, and a "frame counter / total frames" counter on the right
- On the left of the window, a small side panel that overlaps it slightly:
the title "● Working on [edit]" and steps that get checked in order:
"Clip transcribed" → "Best take picked" → "3 shots cut" →
"Captions added" → "[N] frames rendered"
(each one checked ✓ 0.5 s after the previous; steps not done yet are faded)
- My captions stay inside the window, at the bottom of the video.
- At the end the window grows back to full screen and closes.Fill in the brackets
| Placeholder | What to put there | Example |
|---|---|---|
[START S] / [END S] | Where the effect starts and ends, in seconds from the start of input.mp4. | 14.0 / 20.0 |
[FILE NAME, e.g. reel-v1.mp4] | The file name shown in the window's title bar. | reel-v1.mp4 |
[edit] | What the side panel says is being worked on, after 'Working on'. | launch reel |
[N] | The number in the last step. Use your clip's real frame count, or ask Claude to read it from the video. | 1440 |
About Pull-Back Reveal
Pull-Back Reveal is a talking-head video effect where your full-screen video shrinks to 58% and turns out to be playing inside a cream desktop editing window, with a real waveform, a moving playhead and a side panel ticking off edit steps. After the one-time setup, paste the prompt below into Claude Code with Opus 5.5 to render it from your footage.
Use it when: You say the video was edited by AI, or want a behind-the-scenes, meta moment.
What the Pull-Back Reveal effect does
Pull-Back Reveal shows the viewer that the video they are watching is being edited. Over 0.8 seconds your full-screen shot shrinks to 58% of the frame, and a light cream desktop window appears around it. The title bar has three coloured dots, your file name and the word “Assistant” on the right. Your video keeps playing in the middle, and underneath runs a timeline with a waveform drawn from your real audio, a moving playhead and a frame counter.
Off the window’s left edge sits a small panel headed “Working on …”. Five steps tick off half a second apart, from transcription to rendering, with the ones still to come shown faded. Your captions keep running inside the window. At the end, the window grows back to full screen and you are in the plain shot again.
When it works and when it hurts
It works on the line where you tell viewers how the video was made. Saying “Claude edited this” is a claim; pulling back to show the edit in progress turns the claim into a picture, at least of the process as you describe it.
It hurts if the panel lists steps that did not happen, because the whole point of the reveal is showing your real workflow. It also costs attention. For those few seconds your face is small and the frame is full of interface, so a key sentence spoken during the reveal tends to get lost. Keep the reveal to the moment it explains.
How Claude builds it
There are two parts: the interface and the timing. The window, title bar, timeline and side panel are designed in HTML and CSS and rendered to transparent PNGs with Playwright, using the helper from setup. The static parts render once; the parts that change, such as each ticked step and the counter, render per state.
The waveform comes from your soundtrack. ffmpeg decodes the audio, Claude takes the peak level for each column of the timeline and draws it as a bar, and the playhead’s position follows the current time in the clip. For each frame, the script scales the video along the easeInOutQuint curve, places it in the window, layers the interface and captions on top, and updates the counter. The close at the end runs the same curve in reverse, and ffmpeg encodes the result with your original audio.
Make it yours
The window is the easiest thing to restyle. A dark theme suits moody footage; a different accent on the dots or the ticks can match your brand. You can rewrite the five steps to fit your real process, slow the ticks to a second apart if you want viewers to read each one, or shrink the video less, say to 65%, to keep your face larger. You can also skip the final grow and end the video inside the window, which works as a closing shot.
Questions
Is this a real editing app?
No. Claude designs the window in HTML and CSS and renders it around your video, frame by frame. The waveform comes from your real audio and the counter from your real frame count, but the app itself is a mock-up. It illustrates the process rather than recording it.
What should the side panel say?
Whatever actually happened in your edit. The default steps describe a typical Claude Code edit: transcribe, choose a take, cut shots, add captions, render. If your process was different, rewrite them. A reveal that lists steps that never happened undercuts the point of showing your work.
Can the window look like the editor I use?
You can describe colours, fonts and layout in plain words and Claude will adjust the mock-up. Avoid copying a real product's logo or branded interface; the neutral cream window keeps attention on your video and does not suggest you used a tool you did not use.
Does it need the person mask?
No. The whole frame shrinks into the window, so nothing passes behind you. What it does rely on from setup is the word-level transcript for your captions and the helper code that reads frames and keeps your audio, which is why the setup still comes first.
Step by step
Run the setup once
Open the folder that holds input.mp4 in Claude Code, choose Opus 5.5 and paste the setup prompt. It produces the word timestamps and caption style that keep your captions running inside the window.
Decide what the window says
Pick the file name and edit name, then read the five steps in the side panel. If any of them did not happen in your edit, rewrite it to describe what did.
Paste and fill in the prompt
Copy the Pull-Back Reveal prompt, fill in your start and end seconds, the file name, the edit name and the frame count, and send it.
Watch and fine-tune
Check that the shrink starts on the right line and that your captions stay readable inside the window. Give notes in plain English, one at a time. Ask for a 540×960 preview first if your machine is slow.
You need: Setup prompt (run once) · Captions from setup · A file name and edit name
Tips
- Make the side panel tell the truth. If no take was chosen or no shots were cut, replace those steps with what Claude really did, so the reveal shows your actual process.
- Start the pull-back on the sentence that sets it up, such as 'this whole video was edited by Claude', so the reveal lands on the claim.
- The steps tick 0.5 s apart, so five steps need about 2.5 seconds after the window opens. Leave enough time in the range for all of them before it closes.
- Your captions shrink with the video. If they become hard to read at 58%, ask Claude to set them slightly larger inside the window.
If it goes wrong
The waveform looks generic or does not match your speech.
Ask Claude to build it from the actual audio of input.mp4, taking the peak level for each column of the timeline, and to move the playhead with the video time rather than at a fixed speed.
Captions spill outside the window or stay at full-screen size.
Ask Claude to scale and position the captions together with the video for the whole range, including the shrink at the start and the grow at the end.
The window's text or edges look soft or jagged.
Ask Claude to render the interface at twice the size and scale it down with Lanczos, or to render it at the exact output size so the text stays crisp.
What it does not do
- The editing window is a mock-up drawn in HTML, not a recording of a real app. The waveform and frame count can be real, but the panel's steps are only as accurate as the text you give them.
- At 58% your face and captions are much smaller on a phone screen, so anything important you say during the reveal is harder to follow.
- There is a lot to draw on every frame: window, timeline, waveform, counter and side panel. Rendering takes longer than a simple overlay, especially over a long range.
- A light cream window around dark or saturated footage can look out of place; whether it suits your video is a taste call.
Sources
- Screenshots — Playwright for Python. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- ffmpeg documentation — FFmpeg. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- Easing functions cheat sheet — easings.net. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- Claude Code overview — Anthropic. Accessed October 21, 2026.
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