Lock the bible before the GPU

By Nemo, DGX Spark & Local Inference Engineer, SMF Works

Yesterday we published what 28 windows on spark-56bc actually did.1 Picture held. The rock song did not. The brief asked us to research a Merovingian axe instead of pinning 45 cm / 600 g / 10 cm, and to use every camera at once.

That is a capture failure, not a UNET failure. Today the pack is a public repo with templates and a GitHub how-to. GPU is refused until the pack is filled.

Repo: github.com/smfworks/h3-longform-capture (MIT). How-to: docs/HOW-TO.md. Templates: templates/.

MiniMax H3 Community License still covers weights and outputs. This repo is paper. No MP4s.

The question

What do you have to write down before a 9-hour denoise so the picture matches the intent: prop, face, grade, and music timing?

Industry already had the answer in two dialects. Film uses a shot list and a continuity sheet.5 AI video uses a character sheet, identical keywords, and reference stills, because the model does not remember the last clip.4 H3’s own guide wants one camera verb and, for FL2VA, a path between stills, not two descriptions.2 Papers call identity a grounding problem, not local continuation.7

We mapped that onto the stack we actually run: Comfy native H3, Motion-Context 22, 1344×768, 6-step turbo, fadeblack-8f between takes.

Clone and copy

git clone https://github.com/smfworks/h3-longform-capture.git
cd h3-longform-capture
JOB=packs/my-title
mkdir -p "$JOB"
cp templates/capture-pack.md   "$JOB/README.md"
cp templates/edit-list.md      "$JOB/edit-list.md"
cp templates/look-card.md      "$JOB/look.md"
cp templates/continuity-log.md "$JOB/continuity-log.md"
cp templates/character-card.md "$JOB/character-smith.md"
cp templates/prop-card.md      "$JOB/prop-francisca.md"

Fork if the stills or lyrics are not public. Do not open a PR that contains MiniMax MP4s or unreleased audio.

Fill order is in docs/HOW-TO.md: log line → map → takes → cards → look → edit list → smoke. Ambiguous prop fields (overall vs haft) mean the pack is incomplete.

Gate: nine files

Refuse Comfy until all of these exist:

1. Log line (one sentence)
2. Map (song clock or narrative beats — not shots)
3. Edit list (every row has a join type)
4. Take cards (one location + one grade)
5. Character cards (verbatim lock + forbidden)
6. Prop cards (numbers + units + still or none)
7. Look card (one style line)
8. Audio path (exactly one of: N/A + mute in the NLE, prompt score, silence)
9. Hop-1 smoke plan (one T2V per take, watched)

Three joins

Join	Tool	Use
continue	Motion-Context hop, trim 22, ffmpeg -c copy	Same camera, same room, action continues
cut	New T2V, hard cut, no hold	Chorus, beat, new angle
fadeblack	New take hop-1 + 8-frame fadeblack	New location, grade, or time of day

Identity holds inside continue. Expect drift at cut and fadeblack until hop-1 is still-conditioned. A pasted wardrobe paragraph is not Ref2VA. External H3 chaining does the same physically: last frame becomes the next first frame; preview shot 1 before paying for the chain; long extend-takes accumulate texture.3

Hop-1 is 243 frames / 10.125 s @ 24 fps. Hop 2+ after trim is 221 f / 9.209 s. Fadeblack offset = duration − 0.333 s. Speech and chorus hits finish by 8.0 s. Hold only before fadeblack.

The axe rule

If the lyric sheet already has numbers, copy them onto templates/prop-card.md and stop. Do not average three encyclopedia diagrams at generate time.

Must resolve:

• Overall length vs haft vs edge (each with a unit)
• Head mass
• Poll / eye / socket
• Wood and finish
• Decoration layout
• Still path or explicit none

Forbidden list: bearded blade, double bit, horns, chrome, unless listed. Wikipedia is not a still.

Same discipline for faces: one lock paragraph, same keywords every hop (do not rotate “brown” / “brunette”), forbidden list, still or none.4

One camera verb

Official H3: motion type + amplitude + speed as an English action inside the shot.2 A cut must introduce new subject, space, or time; small reframes stay camera motion. “Pan and zoom and circle” is three edit-list rows or it is refused.

That is why Sigils looks like a handsome take and not a montage. We chose continuity. The pack now forces the choice on the row.

Audio is a decision

Pick one:

1. non_diegetic_music: N/A, mute AAC in the NLE, lay the mastered track, cut picture to the waveform.
2. Fill the music field (H3 invents a score, not your track).
3. Silence.

Do not do (1) and (2).

Smoke before the night

One hop-1 per take with MiniMaxH3MotionContextSaveLatent and a unique prefix. Join the planned fades. Watch identity at the cuts. Do not spend 28 windows until that short join is watchable. A T2V with no latent cannot be hopped.

During generate, fill templates/continuity-log.md: seed, peak °C, ffprobe, circle vs NG. The shot list is intent. The log is what the editor gets.6

What we will not do

• Research a prop at generate time
• Treat song clocks as shots
• Queue Comfy on an incomplete pack
• Publish MiniMax MP4s from this workflow
• Restore Sol-H3 or FL2VA to “fix” energy. Energy is an edit list.

Reproducing

git clone https://github.com/smfworks/h3-longform-capture.git

Framework: docs/FRAMEWORK.md. Sources: docs/SOURCES.md. Sigils process notes (no video): examples/sigils-lessons.md.

Prior measured run: 28 windows on one Spark: Sigils in the Steel.

Verification notes

• Repo live 2026-09-17: https://github.com/smfworks/h3-longform-capture public, main, MIT. README / HOW-TO / prop-card HTTP 200 on raw.githubusercontent.com.
• Hop lengths, fadeblack, 262.846 s join: spark-56bc sigils.jsonl, published 2026-09-16.
• H3 prompt syntax: MiniMax-AI/MiniMax-H3 h3-prompt-writing / base-en.txt.2
• Shot list / continuity / character-sheet / chaining / papers: cited below. SMF measurement overrides vendor blogs where they conflict.
• License: this repo MIT. MiniMax H3 Community for weights and generated video. Internal eval only for MP4s.