Chapter card maker

Where chapter cards go

A chapter card is placed before every take except the first. An episode with four takes gets three chapter cards; an episode with twelve gets eleven. The first take follows the title card directly, so the title card does the work of the first chapter heading.

Each card shows CHAPTER and its number as a label in the accent colour, with the chapter title in large type below. The chapter title is a short phrase you attach to the take: two to five words works best. If a take has no chapter title the card falls back to the chapter number alone.

Chapter cards are optional per episode. A toggle on the episode turns them off for a cut that should run continuously, and the runtime meter drops their seconds the moment you do.

Naming chapters

The draft tool proposes a chapter title for every take in the outline it writes. The names it chooses tend to be concrete: a place, an object, a line of dialogue. When you render a take from a drafted slot the chapter title travels with it, and you can rename it afterwards from the take's row without re-rendering anything.

Chapter titles are also the easiest way to read an episode at a glance. The episode page lists the takes with their chapter titles beside them, so an episode reads like a table of contents before you have pressed play.

Titles are limited to sixty characters. On a widescreen card a long title wraps to two lines; on a vertical card to three.

Theme and timing

Chapter cards use the series theme, like the title and end cards. They are rendered as two-second silent clips at the episode frame and joined to the takes with the same normalisation pass, so there is no flicker or audio pop at the cut.

Two seconds is deliberate. It is long enough to read a five-word title and short enough that eleven of them in a five-minute episode add twenty-two seconds, not a minute.

What they add to runtime and cost

The runtime meter counts chapter cards: an episode's planned runtime is the sum of its take durations plus two seconds for the title card, two for the end card and two for each chapter card. Turn chapter cards off and the meter updates immediately.

Cards do not change the packaging price. Stitching is two credits whether the episode has no chapter cards or eleven. Renaming a chapter and packaging again is another two credits for the new cut, and the previous cut is retired.