CinemaDigest Desktop Manual

Getting started

CinemaDigest is a Windows desktop app. It processes your films entirely on your machine. After installing, open it and check the log pane — it verifies FFmpeg and lists which optional models are present.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11, 64-bit.
• ~4 GB of disk for the app + model files (Whisper ~1.5 GB, and model downloads on first use).
• An active CinemaDigest account (free or paid) to plan through the server.

The account section

In the Auto-Recap panel you’ll find CinemaDigest Account:

• Server — enter https://movierecapper.com.
• Email / Password — your account credentials.
• Sign in — logs in and stores a session token.
• Sign up — creates a free account.
• Forgot — sends a password-reset email.
• Usage — shows your plan, status, and monthly recap count.
• Devices — lists your active sessions so you can sign out other machines.

Once signed in, the recap planner routes its LLM calls through the server — you don’t need your own Gemini key, and usage is metered against your plan.

Making a recap

1. Select your source video in the Input Video field.
2. Choose Recap Settings: duration (e.g. 3 min), pacing, style, clip count, and a Method (Action / Suspense / Thriller / Drama / Comedy / Mystery).
3. Set the narration language + voice (Language dropdown). English is the default; non-English uses edge-tts voiceover and translated captions.
4. Click the recap button. The app will: transcribe → detect action scenes → plan the clips → write narration → render the video. Your film never leaves the machine.

Auto-recap queue

You can queue multiple videos for batch processing. Progress shows in the log and progress bar; models are released between steps to save memory.

Captions & styling

• Enable Captions to burn subtitles (drawtext or libass for Arabic/Hindi shaping).
• Adjust font size, outline, alignment, and fade via Caption Style.
• Translate narration into fr, de, es, it, pt, nl, ru, ja, zh, ar, hi.

Soundtrack

Optional Auto Soundtrack generates music locally with Bark (MIT-licensed, ~1 GB download on first use). You can instead add your own music files to the Music queue — leave Auto Soundtrack off and your files play instead.

In-browser planner & local endpoint

The web app can drive a local endpoint that the desktop app exposes. With the app running, the browser planner connects to http://127.0.0.1:<port>, you pick a movie, and all heavy compute (transcribe / plan / render) runs locally — nothing is uploaded to the server. Use --serve or the local mode in the app to start the endpoint, then open the planner page.

Config & data

• Settings are saved to ~/.video_recap_config.json.
• Transcripts and plans are cached per video in .video_recap_cache next to your movies.
• Use Save/Load Profile to share settings presets.

Troubleshooting

• FFmpeg not found — the bundled build includes it; if missing, install FFmpeg and add it to PATH.
• Planning fails — check you’re signed in and your plan has remaining recaps (see Usage).
• Slow first run — model downloads (Whisper, Bark) happen on first use.
• For anything else, see the log pane and contact support.