The panels, one by one

Your video is one project file (.stormproj). It keeps everything needed to render it again exactly: storm, template, camera, look, brand and texts.

• File (top left): New project, Open, Save (Ctrl+S), Save as and Export video. Click the project name to rename it; a dot after the name means there are unsaved changes.
• Undo / Redo: every change can be undone (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z). A slider drag counts as one step.

1. Pick the storm. Live now lists active NHC/CPHC storms from your data server (every advisory is kept: pick an older one under Advisory). Recent storms are ones that ended in the last weeks. You can also load a storm file. Every storm is checked before use, and the one you use is saved inside the project.

Past storms (folded under the storm list): search by name and/or year: Atlantic storms since 1851 and Eastern/Central Pacific since 1949 (NHC HURDAT2, built into the app), plus all other oceans since 2022 (IBTrACS), by name or year. It is replayed "as if live": pick the moment under Replay as of; what happened next plays as the forecast, with an illustrative cone, and every frame says it is a replay. A Historical badge with the dates and a big year sits above the title so it can never be mistaken for a current storm (restyle or hide it in Design → Historical badge).

Location line: under the title, every storm (live or historical) says where it is in plain words, e.g. "Gulf of Mexico · 200 mi SW of Tampa, Florida" or "Over Florida". It follows the storm as it moves (switch that off in Design → Location line to keep the advisory position). Distances use miles when wind is in mph, otherwise km. Name for the Gulf (Design → Location line) chooses what the line calls the Gulf while a storm is in it: Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America, both names (the default), or no sea name.

Landfall on live storms is estimated where the official forecast track meets land (NHC does not publish a landfall point), and labelled "near …".

Another storm, advisory or replay moment for a project that is already made keeps its timeline as it is: the length, the holds, every pin at the same second of the video (it shows whatever the new storm is doing then), texts, the intro and outro, the look and your Design changes. The camera, the storm's clock and the build-on are worked out again for the new storm. Check any text you wrote about the first storm. A click on a template still builds a fresh cut.

The card on top shows the storm in use: its strength, the time of the data, the source, and whether it is Live, a Replay or Test data. A live advisory more than 9 hours old is marked in red: check for a newer one before it goes out.

Click a template. One click builds a complete video from the storm's own data: timing, camera moves and what is shown. Click another template to try it. Ctrl+Z goes back.

• Forecast track: the whole cone, then follow the forecast in to landfall.
• Full track build-up: the whole storm, with path, points, labels and cone building in order.
• Landfall close-up: tight on the eye as it comes ashore.
• Past track recap: from the young storm to now.
• More: a locked-off full-track frame, and a 9:16 social version.

Zoom / margin makes the whole scene closer or wider; Pan nudges it left/right and up/down. They apply to the whole video, are kept when you rebuild, and a double-click resets each one.

Presenter on screen keeps one side free for a weather presenter: choose left or right and how much space. The camera moves the storm into the free side; graphics on that side move across, or hide while the presenter is on (they stay in your look). The safe guides show the presenter area. The presenter space is for 16:9 video (HD and 4K) only: in vertical, portrait and square videos it is left out, and your setting is kept. The person button in the top bar switches it Off, Left, Right.

Fine-tune camera (folded) lets you change the shot, time span, motion and how graphics appear, one by one. The template tile then shows fine-tuned; Back to template undoes it.

• Size: 16:9, 9:16, square and more. Graphics and camera adapt to each shape automatically.
• Animation: how long the storm animation lasts, from 2 seconds to 5 minutes (type the seconds: 300 for five minutes). A long video takes long to export, and its file is large: the line under Quality says how large.
• Hold at start / end (in the timeline header, or drag an edge of the Story lane): extra seconds before and after the animation. The frame waits while the wind and the eye keep moving.
• Safe areas: Action safe and Title safe as a share of the frame. EBU (93% and 90%) is the standard for HD and 4K; Legacy (90% and 80%) is the older, tighter one. Keep graphics inside title safe holds every graphic inside the inner frame; switched off, they may go out to action safe. The guides in the preview follow these settings and are never exported.
• Graphics size in vertical video: a phone shows the whole tall frame small, so in a frame taller than wide every graphic is drawn this much bigger (×1.5 unless changed; all of it at 9:16, about a third of it at 4:5, which has less room), on top of its own Scale. The project keeps its own sizes, so one project gives the TV video at TV sizes and the phone video bigger. In a 9:16 frame the preview also shows, in red, roughly where YouTube Shorts puts its own title, channel name and buttons over the video (a guide only: never exported, and nothing is kept out of it).
• Shrink graphics that are too wide: a graphic wider than the space it may use is scaled down to fit. Mirror for right-to-left languages: in Arabic and Urdu every corner graphic swaps sides.
• Pins: see Timeline in the manual.
• Hide overlays (the eye button by the time, or O): preview only map and storm, without titles, legend or labels, while you work on the camera. The export is not affected.

• Safe guides: title- and action-safe frames. Only on screen, never exported.
• Satellite: NASA imagery under the map (needs internet).
• Units: wind in mph, kt, km/h or m/s; pressure in mb or hPa.
• Language: all generated words (status, directions, dates). The storm word follows the ocean: hurricane, typhoon or cyclone. Non-English wording is a draft: have a native speaker check it before broadcast. Text you type yourself is not translated.
• Storm clock: the time that moves with the storm on the info card and the other graphics, in hours and minutes, or in whole hours (8:00, 9:00 …), which can be read while the storm moves fast. The time of the data ("as of") and the forecast points keep their exact time.
• Time zone: every time on the video is shown in this zone, with its name for that time of year: EDT in summer and EST in winter, CEST and CET, BST and GMT.

Choose how the video looks. Everything here is a starting point you can change.

• Design packs: complete broadcast styles: map colours, graphic layouts, fonts, sizes and category colours. A pack changes only the look: your time zone, units and language stay as they are.
• Basic looks: plain Night, Daylight and High contrast.
• My looks: your own saved looks.

To make your own: pick the closest look, adjust anything in Design, then Save my look. Export and Import share looks between computers.

A look never contains your brand. The brand is put on top separately, so one brand works with every look.

Your identity: logo, font and accent colour, put on top of whichever look you choose.

• Put brand on / Remove: removing brings the look underneath back exactly.
• New…: name, accent colour, logo (PNG/SVG) and font (TTF/OTF/WOFF2). Leave font or logo empty to keep the look's own.
• The brand stays when you change the look or the template, and it travels inside the project file.

Images: extra pictures over the video, such as a second logo, a channel bug or a watermark. Add one, click it in the list, then set it up.

• In a corner: it takes the corner itself, and the other graphics there stack inward from it. Nothing is covered.
• Free: it sits exactly where you put it on the five-by-five grid and may cover other graphics. Behind the graphics puts it under the title, card and legend.
• Size is the width as a share of the short side of the frame, so an image is the same size in 16:9 and 9:16.
• Appears: the whole video, or only between two times (it fades in and out). The times count from the start of the storm video, after any intro.
• Keep these images with brand saves them with the brand that is on, so they come with it in every project.

Every element on its own: pick it from the list (eye, cone, tracks, labels, title, info card, legend, wind, map…), then change colours, sizes, layouts and shadows.

The switch on each row shows or hides that element. Click a row to open its settings under it, click it again to close them. The search box finds an element or a setting by name.

Layout check (the line on top) looks through the whole video for a graphic that leaves the safe area or sits on another one. Click a problem to go to that moment and open that graphic. Order in its corner (in a graphic that shares its corner) moves it nearer the corner or further from it. The historical badge and the location line under the title move with the title; a location line in a corner of its own has its own place there. The eye has a Symbol opacity and a Number opacity of its own. Move across and Move up or down move one graphic on its own, even out of the safe area; the others in its corner stay where they are (the historical badge and a location line under the title go with the title). The layout check says if it now overlaps or leaves the frame. One project with a TV and a phone format moves it the same in both: check each.

Ticker: type the messages one per line, or load them from a file (TXT, CSV, XML or RSS, JSON). Motion: still on one line, Scroll, or One at a time. Text from a file shows a small "Source" credit at the right end of the bar. A file that cannot be read never clears the ticker: the last messages stay.

Changes show immediately and can be undone. To keep a set of changes for other videos, use Save my look in Style.

• Frame rate: 25, 50, 59.94 fps and others (for the MP4 and the PNG sequence).
• Export video: the finished video. Every frame is rendered completely, so it can take a while; Cancel stops it.
• Quality: Small (web and social), Standard, High (broadcast), Maximum (for re-editing) or a custom bitrate in Mbit/s. The line underneath shows the bitrate and roughly how big the file will be. Higher keeps fine map detail and the wind particles sharper. If the computer's encoder can't go that high at this size, the export steps down and says so.
• Save frame as image: the frame at the playhead as PNG (keeps transparency) or JPG, at the full canvas size.
• PNG sequence with alpha: separate layers (map, wind, storm, labels, graphics) with transparency, for compositing in your editing software. Tick the layers you want.
• Spike test: renders the technical test set (4K and 9:16).

This storm is test data for building the app: a past storm replayed as if live. Real advisories come later from the data pipeline. The wind particles are modelled from the storm's wind radii and labelled as such.

Along the bottom of the window. The header has play and the jump buttons, the time, + Add, the hold and animation lengths, Fit and zoom.

• Ruler: click or drag to move the red playhead. A click on an empty part of a lane does the same.
• Media: an intro plays before the storm video and an outro after it, and clips can go in the middle: the storm video waits while one is on and carries on from the same moment after it. The video is longer by their length. Each is a picture (PNG, JPG or WebP) or a video file (MP4, MOV or WebM). Add an intro or an outro with + Add or the buttons on the lane, and a clip in the middle with + Add, Insert media (a picture or a video, put in at the playhead; up to eight in the middle, each at least a second of storm video from the next and from both ends). Click a block for its settings: when it comes on (a clip in the middle), length, Fill the frame or Show all of it, a slow zoom (pictures), and a cut or a half-second cross-fade where it joins the storm video. Drag a block's end to change its length; drag a clip in the middle to move it; Delete removes it. The graphics, the ticker, the pins and the texts belong to the storm video, so they are not on these clips; a text or a pin that runs across a clip in the middle carries on after it.
  A video plays from its start for as long as the clip lasts: up to its own length, five minutes at most. Its own sound is heard with it, in the preview and in the exported MP4: Its sound in the clip's settings turns it off or sets how loud it is (up to 200% for a quiet one), and a small speaker on the block shows that it is heard. The sound runs while the clip is on its own; during a cross-fade the picture holds still and is silent. The music is lowered under it as under a voice-over, unless that is switched off in the music's settings. A video from an older project stays silent until its sound is turned on. Leave out at its start starts a video that many seconds into its file; Sound fades in and Sound fades out bring its own sound in and out over the seconds you set. Pictures are saved inside the project file. A video file is not: it stays where it is on this computer and the project remembers which file it is. In Chrome and Edge the app finds it again when the project is opened (click the clip if the browser wants your OK); in other browsers, on another computer, or after the file was moved or changed, choose it again with Replace. An export stops with a message if a video file is missing. Automatic shows cannot use video files yet.
• Story: hold at start, the animation, hold at end. Drag an edge to change one (whole seconds).
• Camera: the template makes the camera move by itself; this lane is for the pins you add on top of it.
• Text: texts that come on over the storm video for a while and go again. Add one at the playhead with + Add or T, then type; it starts as a caption. In its settings choose the kind: Key messages (a heading and up to six lines, on the left or the right), Headline (a bar along the bottom), Full screen (the frame is dimmed and the text stands in the middle) or Caption. It can come on with a cut, a fade or a wipe, and may use the ticker's tokens such as {NAME} and {WIND}. Drag a block to move it, drag an end to change its length; texts that are on at the same time take a row each. Colours and font come from the look, and a panel keeps clear of the other graphics. A text keeps its time in the video: if you later add a Wait or change the length, check it still falls where you want it. Over pictures and videos (in its settings): the text stays on top while a picture or video from the Media lane is on screen, and it can lie on the intro or the outro; its block on the lane shows two stacked squares. Such a text counts the seconds of the whole video, so it does not wait while a clip in the middle is on. With the playhead on a clip, + Add, Text puts a text over that clip. The storm graphics are not drawn while a clip is on screen.
• Music: one piece of music under the whole video, the intro and the outro included. Add it with + Add, Music or the button on the lane (MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG or FLAC, up to ten minutes). Its block shows the sound, and a white line that is the volume the viewer hears. Click it for its settings: Volume, Fade in, Fade out, where it starts and how long it is on (left alone, it plays to the end of the video or of the music). Drag the block to move it, drag its right end to make it shorter; the speaker beside the lane's name switches it off without removing it; with its settings open, Delete removes it. Press play to hear it with the preview. The exported MP4 gets a sound track (AAC where the browser can write it; otherwise Opus, and the export says so). A PNG sequence has no sound. Like a video, the sound file is not saved inside the project: it stays where it is on this computer, and the app finds it again in Chrome and Edge; elsewhere choose it again with Replace. Automatic shows cannot use a music file yet.
• Voice-over: spoken commentary from sound files (MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG or FLAC, each up to ten minutes). Add a clip at the playhead with + Add, Import voice-over (the empty lane has a button for it too). Click a block for its settings: Volume (up to 200% for a quiet recording), where it starts, how long it is on, and how much of the recording to leave out at its start. Drag a block to move it, drag its left end to leave out the start, its right end to cut it short; clips that are on at the same time take a row each and are heard together. The speaker beside the lane's name switches the whole voice-over off; Delete removes the selected clip. The music is lowered while a clip is on and comes back after it: its settings have Lower under voice-over and Lower by, and the white line on its block shows the dips. If the sound goes over full level, the export says where. A clip's place is a second of the whole video: it stays there when you later change the picture's timing, so add the voice-over last. Like the music, a sound file is not saved inside the project; automatic shows cannot use one yet. Recording: + Add, Record voice-over (or Record on the empty lane) records with the microphone from the playhead. The browser asks for the microphone, a 3-2-1 count runs, then the video plays without sound (so the music is not picked up) while you speak; Space, Enter, Esc or Stop ends it and keeps the take, as does the end of the video (during the count they cancel it instead). Nothing else in the window answers until it is over. The take becomes a clip where the playhead was. It is kept in this browser; Save a copy in its settings saves it as a WAV file, which you need on another computer, or when the app says the browser would not store the take. Microphone: during the count, the list in the recording strip chooses which microphone records (the count waits while it is open, then starts again with it); the choice is remembered in this browser. A microphone that has your voice on one side only is recorded at full level. + Add, Recordings in this browser… lists every take kept here, with its date, length and size: save one as a WAV file, or remove one the open project does not use (click Remove twice). A take stays here when its clip is taken off the timeline, until you remove it.
• Media folder: video files, the music and voice-over files are not inside the project file. When the project is saved, a copy of each can be kept in a folder named “media” beside the project file; the app asks once to be shown the folder the project is in. The project then finds its files there whatever became of the originals, and on another computer when that folder is copied along with the project file (there, click one of its clips once to show the browser the folder). Projects in the same folder share it, and the app never deletes anything in it. This needs Chrome or Edge, or Brave with its File System Access setting switched on.
• Sound level (in Canvas and export, above Export video): Loudness brings the whole video's sound, music, voice-over and video clips together, to one loudness: −23 LUFS for European broadcast (EBU R 128), −24 for US broadcast (ATSC A/85), −16 or −14 for online video. The finished mix is measured the way broadcasters measure it and raised or lowered as a whole, the same in the preview and in the export; the line under it says what was measured and what was done, and the export's summary gives the figures. Its peaks are kept under the limit that goes with the target (−1 dB, −2 dB for the US one): if reaching the loudness would push them over, the sound is raised only as far as they allow, and the line says so and where the highest peak is. After a change to the sound the line says Measuring the sound… for a moment; an export always waits for the measure. The figures are those of the whole sound as the app hands it to the encoder: the MP4's sound can read a few tenths of a decibel differently once it is encoded, and a broadcaster may measure only the speech of a long programme, or ask for lower peaks in an encoded file, so check their delivery rules. With Loudness Off, Master volume sets the level of the whole by hand (10% to 200%).
• Pins are blocks on the lanes. Add one at the playhead with + Add or a key. Drag a block to move it; drag either end to make it longer or shorter; click it to see its settings in the right panel; Delete removes it. Each pin sticks to its storm moment.
  • Wait (P, on Story): the storm and camera pause for a few seconds; the video gets longer.
  • Zoom (Z, on Camera): the whole frame eases closer or wider (under 100% = closer) and stays there until the next Zoom pin.
  • Storm (S, on Camera): the camera zooms in on the storm's eye, follows it for the hold, then zooms back out.
  • Zoom and Storm can also switch on Storm waits: the storm stops while the camera moves.
  • Speed (R, on Story): slow motion or fast forward for a stretch of the story; the video length changes.
  • Skip (K, on Story): cuts forward past a stretch of the story. The cut is covered by a flash in a colour you choose, or by a cross-fade from the picture before to the picture after.
• While you drag a pin, its block shows where it will land. Pins that change the timing (Wait, Speed, Skip) cannot sit on top of one another: the block stops beside the one in the way and a note says why. Moving one of them moves everything after it, because the video gets longer or shorter there.
• On the Camera lane, Zoom pins keep the top row and Storm pins the row under it. A pin the video cannot use is dimmed and says why when you point at it.
• Drag the top edge of the timeline to make it taller or shorter.