Beginner overview
This guide is for people who aren’t full-time developers. It’s built to walk you, one step at a time, from setting up your environment, to picking a track, to making your first video up to publish metadata. If you get stuck along the way, keep troubleshooting open in a side tab and look for the same symptom.
Who this was written for
Section titled “Who this was written for”Quite a few people picking up this base aren’t full-time developers. So the tone is hand-holding. There is one assumption about your starting level, though.
The assumption that you’ve opened a terminal at least once and have experience working with AI. It spells out commands one line at a time, but it doesn’t explain from scratch “what a terminal is” or “what ffmpeg is.” For that, keep free learning material open in a side tab (a terminal intro on YouTube, Anthropic’s Claude Code quickstart).
scene-studio has more tools to install than other bases. ffmpeg is needed on both tracks, generative additionally needs the Codex CLI, and remix needs yt-dlp and Whisper. You only install the tools for the track you’ll use.
It assumes these three things.
- You know the name and rough use of the terminal. Commands are spelled out one line at a time on top of that.
- The first run goes as far as verifying the environment with
/start, picking a track, and capturing the channel identity. The first video comes after. - AI makes the video. This guide uses Claude Code. You only need to know what video you want to make.
Step guide
Section titled “Step guide”| Step | What you do | Rough time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 prerequisites | Install ffmpeg, OPENAI_API_KEY, per-track tools, Claude Code | 40–80 min the first time |
| 2 clone-and-install | Get the base | 5–10 min |
| 3 first-run | Verify the environment, pick a track, capture the channel identity with /start | 20–40 min |
| 4 first-generative-video | First generative video (plan → scenes → images → video) | 30 min–1 hr |
| 5 first-remix-video | First remix video (URL → collection → analysis → auto-cut) | 20–40 min |
| 6 publish | Make publish metadata and upload it yourself | 20–40 min |
| 7 automated-safety-net | Understand the approval gate, the license gate, and the hooks | 10 min |
| 8 when-ai-gets-stuck | Unblock the AI workflow itself | only when needed |
| 9 troubleshooting | A collection of common sticking points | only when needed |
| 10 staying-up-to-date (optional) | Bring base updates into your work | 10–30 min per cycle |
For steps 4 and 5, you only read the track you use. Generative only is step 4, remix only is step 5, both is both. If you’re already comfortable with a short-form pipeline, the expert manual covers the same base at a shorter pace.
When you’re stuck
Section titled “When you’re stuck”The first place to look is troubleshooting. With many external tools, getting stuck at install is common, and that’s mostly collected there.
If it still doesn’t resolve, open a GitHub issue or post in the team Slack. Write down where you got stuck, the full error, and environment info (operating system, ffmpeg version) together.
The first run is the slowest. Once the tools are installed, you skip step 1 wholesale for the next video.
How far the manual goes, where the base begins
Section titled “How far the manual goes, where the base begins”What this step table covers is what the base handles automatically — the approval gate, the license gate, template filling, the pipeline-performance policy, and other differentiators. The manual text is free.
The actual base code and the full .claude/ set (agents, skills, hooks) will be released soon as a license plus an update channel. When pricing and the payment channel are set, it’ll be announced here and on the landing.