Parsing Video

Claude cannot play video, but it can read images. To interpret a video, sample frames evenly across its duration, tile them into timestamped contact sheets, and Read the sheets. A 4×4 sheet compresses ~16 moments into one image, preserving narrative flow — what changed, in what order, roughly when.

Requires ffmpeg/ffprobe (apt-get update && apt-get install -y ffmpeg if missing).

Workflow

1. Probe first

ffprobe -v quiet -print_format json -show_format -show_streams input.mp4

Note duration, resolution, and whether there's an audio stream. Duration drives how many sheets you need.

2. Generate contact sheet(s)