How to hit an exact runtime to the second
Give Vizard Agent the source and say the exact runtime you need. It treats the number as a constraint rather than a target: it selects the combination of moments that fills it, opens on the strongest hook, and checks the original for burnt-in captions before it reframes anything.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
The important word is "exactly". Without it, a runtime reads as guidance, and Vizard Agent will deliver a very good fifty-four-second cut that is no use to you at all. Say what the opening has to do, and why the number matters, since that decides which idea gets sacrificed when something has to go.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
An exact length is a packing problem: the edit is built from complete moments whose lengths add up, not by trimming the last sentence or speeding anything up. When two good segments compete for one slot, the choice comes from comparing what they actually say. In the session behind this article it:
- Downloaded a long recorded talk, probed it, transcribed it with word-level timings and listed the first segments with exact timestamps.
- Tested a vertical crop and checked the whole timeline for burnt-in captions before making any cropping decision, since a vertical crop would cut them in half.
- Sampled vertical crops of every candidate segment, combined the previews into one image and compared the exact transcripts of the two strongest candidates.
- Checked whether music was already in the audio before adding any, then searched for, downloaded and measured a music bed.
- Generated animated captions, tested two styles on a frame, built a headline badge and wrote a dynamic framing script for the minute.
- Measured the loudness, reviewed frames across the whole edit and re-mixed with proper normalisation before rendering the master.
When does this not work well?
An exact runtime is a real constraint, and constraints cost something. A source barely longer than the target leaves nothing to choose from, one very long point may not fit at all, and with no slack, one extra word means something else goes. Seconds are not frames, so say if you need a frame-exact spec.
Common questions
Will it be exactly that length? Yes. Vizard Agent treats the number as the constraint.
Does it speed things up to fit? No, unless you ask. Vizard Agent chooses different moments instead.
What if my source is too short? Vizard Agent tells you rather than padding it out.