If you have ever been on the internet, you probably have seen one of those funny video compilations, which go viral on Facebook. You know, the ones with the cutesy cats doing silly stuff, usually having titles like "EPIC FAIL COMPILATION 😂 SILLY CATS FALLING OVER 😂 MUST SEE 😂" or "FAIL COMPILATION 😂 DON'T LAUGH CHALLENGE 😂 100% IMPOSSIBLE 😂" or something like that.
Have you wondered how much money one of those videos could make? I have - most of them probably not that much. But what if you had a lot of those? One of them is bound to go viral, right? After all, the standard is not high as it is.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time to look at cat videos all day and make compilations. I also kind of like my brain cells.
What if you could make one of those videos by not moving a finger at all? That's what this project does.
Explanation
You provide what topics you want to have compilations on. Topics are things like "dogs", "cats", "babies", "fails", etc. You also provide some search queries which can be used to find such videos.
Then the software takes over and starts working its magic. It's made to work like a shop inventory - you configure how much of every item you want to have and the rest is taken care of automatically. It generates different videos for different platforms because every platform has a format that works best. On YouTube, 10+ minute videos are preferred, in a 16:9 ratio. On Facebook, around 3 minutes is the preferred length, vertical format.
Because it works like an inventory, you could set up the software to run in the background and it would ensure that you always have enough videos, depending on your configuration.
I have it configured to always have at least 3 YouTube videos and 9 Facebook videos. So if I upload one (and mark it as used), the software will automatically generate one YouTube video to fill the gap.
And sure enough, on a clean start, in about 30 minutes we have our first 4 compilations generated! 3 for Facebook, and 1 for YouTube.
Yes, not lightning-fast, but there is nothing I can do about network speed. Plus, some heavy computing is done to slice videos into clips and then stitch them into a compilation.
What about copyright?
It's configured to use only CC0 videos, meaning only videos part of the public domain.
Why it exists
For fun. Maybe as a case study? I don't know. I just liked the challenge, I didn't intend to make money out of it. The project could be extended to generate clickbait titles, descriptions, and hashtags, and upload the videos automatically. However, I have no interest in doing that. The internet is filled with shitty content as it is, I don't want to contribute to that.
However, the technical side is interesting and to some may be worth exploring. If you are interested, I have written a bit more detailed articles about it. You can find them at the bottom of this page.
The result
Here is a cat video generated for Facebook:
click play; made it not pre-loaded to save you some data if you don't care
Probably not as good as a human would make it, but for a project made in two days, and requiring no human intervention, I'd say it's fine.