What are the steps?
- 01
Hook. The shot: written, or a source's hook moment.
- 02
Person. The person in the hook's first frame.
- 03
Animate. Animate that frame into a short hook, silent or speaking.
- 04
Export. The hook line and its style, the cut into your demo, and music.
How much text fits in a hook?
About 15 characters a second, after half a second to find the text, and never more than 52 (two lines). A 3 second hook, the default, carries 38. The hook writers aim at this budget, and the Export step counts your line against it without ever blocking a longer one.
| Hook length | Characters of text |
|---|---|
| 2 seconds | 22 |
| 2.5 seconds | 30 |
| 3 seconds | 38 |
| 3.5 seconds | 45 |
| 4 seconds | 52 |
| 5 seconds | 52 |
Spaces count. The line has to be read inside the hook with the sound off, so the budget starts once the eye has found it, 0.5 seconds in.
Can the hook speak?
Yes. Each hook is silent or speaking, chosen when you animate it. By default vid3k keeps the hook's own sound when it hears at least 0.3 seconds of speech in the trimmed hook, and mutes it otherwise. Your music ducks under the speech.
What if my demo is a landscape screen recording?
It is shown whole over a blurred copy of itself, so the 9:16 frame stays full and nothing on the screen is cut off. An upright demo fills the frame. You can also crop to fill.
Which text styles are there?
9 built-in styles: Text Box, Clean, Soft, Story, App, Comment, Bold, Hype and Meme. Each hook line can mark one keyword, drawn in your space's accent color. The Comment style draws a reply-to-comment card, and its @handle is only ever one you type, never a generated one.
Save a style of your own as a preset of your space, and start new Hook + Demo runs from it with Use in Hook + Demo.
How long is the hook?
Between 2 and 5 seconds, 3 by default. The hook is trimmed to that length when it is cut into your demo, and the text budget follows it.
How loud is the finished ad?
Every render ends with the same master at -14 LUFS, so a Hook + Demo ad plays as loud as everything else you make in vid3k. Music is yours to bring: vid3k ships no music.
