# Animate a full music video to the beat with an agent-written engine

PaperChase agent use case (free feed entry), version 1.0. Source: [u/chrisBhappy on r/ClaudeAI](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1xdnfqe/opus_55_animated_this_music_video_frame_by_frame/), 2026-10-23.

## What they did

The engine first breaks the song down: separate vocals, drums and bass, map the tempo, and timestamp each sung word. Choreography is written as code pinned to exact moments in the song, and a simple physics solver fills in runs and jumps between those points. The runner is drawn from a library of hand-picked poses, each held for roughly two frames, which gives a stop-motion look. The result is one continuous shot with camera motion, paint and rain effects.

## Worth knowing

The author tested a video model with the song as input and it came in 1.25 to 2 seconds late each time, with a projected cost near $480 for the full piece, against $0.30 for the code-timed version of the same test clip. It took 12 full renders. This is a big build, but the core idea (put timing in code, use generated images only as a pose library) works at small scale too.

## Workflow template

```text
Split the song into stems and build a beat and word timing map
Write choreography as code pinned to bar numbers and timestamps
Let a physics step fill motion between the pinned moments
Build a pose library from generated clips and swap poses on a fixed note length
Render, review and repeat
```

## Steps

1. **Read what they did.** Skim the source post linked below, then the summary on this page.
2. **Fill in the template.** Copy the prompt and replace every [bracketed] value with your own project details.
3. **Run it once and check.** Run it on a small task first and confirm the result yourself before you trust it on real work.

## Credit

Workflow reported by u/chrisBhappy on r/ClaudeAI: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1xdnfqe/opus_55_animated_this_music_video_frame_by_frame/

Summary and template written by PaperChaseWebb in our own words. Questions: mgmt@paperchasewebb.com