Score with a hole, not ducking, where something plays live
Cut the score to silence under live music, a laugh or a knock instead of ducking it; ducking is audible, a hole is not. The rule, the measured levels and the ffmpeg line.
Score rules for this cut: 1. Chord changes land on the beat nearest a picture cut, not on a bar grid. Parts of the film may run at different tempos; part boundaries sit on cuts too. 2. Wherever something plays live in the footage (a street musician, a car radio you keep, a band), the score has a HOLE: full silence from {hole_start} to {hole_end} seconds, not a duck. The same for a punchline that lives in a reaction, a knock, a laugh: silence in the score there. 3. Under speech the score sits about 15 dB below the voice; sidechain it to the voice track so it steps back by itself. Barely audible, and not everywhere. 4. Mood comes from scale degrees, not tempo. A solitary walk: major sevenths, a minor sixth. A light family film: triads with an added sixth, no minor chord. ffmpeg, the hole on the score track, video stream copied: ffmpeg -i film.mp4 -i score.wav -filter_complex "[1:a]volume=enable='between(t,{hole_start},{hole_end})':volume=0[sc];[0:a][sc]amix=inputs=2:duration=first:normalize=0[a]" -map 0:v -map "[a]" -c:v copy -c:a aac film.scored.mp4
In Claude Code, paste the prompt as a message, or run /video-edit which does this end to end.
Steps
- Mark every live-sound window with its start and end in seconds (from the transcript or the waveform) before writing a note of score.
- Lay the score as one track, cut the holes, then mix it under the original audio.
- Listen to each hole edge with headphones: the score must be gone before the first live note, not fading during it.
Example
Measured on one film: inside the live-music window the score sat at -91 dB, against -13.6 dB at full level. Ducking is audible; a hole is not.
Tips
- A 'major' score came out sad at the right BPM because of its chords. Fix mood in the harmony, not in the tempo.
- If someone plays in the footage, lift the harmony from the recording (audio-to-MIDI) and feed it to the score. On noisy street audio expect the key and chords back, not the melody: three models agreed on the key and disagreed on the tune.
- In Claude Code, `/video-edit` applies these rules to a folder of clips; the numbers live in its references/sound.md.
| works with | ffmpeg: A terminal command you run yourself. · CapCut / any editor: A manual recipe for any editor. · Claude Code: Runs as a skill or a prompt in the terminal; can read your files and write the result. |
| skill | npx skills add fortunto2/solo-factory/video-edit · source |
| cost | Free. No API, no key. |
| status | Unverified: written from the technique, not yet run end to end by us. |
| license | CC BY 4.0 for the text here; skills are MIT. |
| updated | 2026-11-01 |
| for agents | score-hole-where-live-sound-plays.md |
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