Free Video Effect
Couch Wall Effect: A Wall Made of Your Past Videos
The wall behind you becomes a grid of your past video thumbnails, each with a view count, while you stay in front.
Claude Code · Opus 5.59:16Medium
- Run the setup once
- Paste the prompt, fill in the [brackets]
- Approve the preview, get your MP4
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The prompt
effects/couch_wall.py: add a "Couch Wall" effect between [START S] and [END S].
- Turn the background into a grid of 3 columns x 4 rows with the images in the assets/thumbs/ folder
(6 px between cards, 10 px rounded corners).
- Put a small "▷ [VIEWS]" label in the bottom-left corner of every card
(values: [1.07M, 534K, 133K, 5,488 ...]).
- Add small white title strips to the top of some cards (like a video title).
- Use the person mask to keep me IN FRONT of the grid; the original background disappears completely.
- Entrance: the cards open from the center outward, staggered (40 ms apart), scale 0→1.
- A two-line title in the lower third of the screen:
small line "[TOP LINE]", large and very bold line "[MAIN WORD]" (white, with a light shadow).
- The grid zooms in very slowly (4% over 3 s, Ken Burns).Fill in the brackets
| Placeholder | What to put there | Example |
|---|---|---|
[START S] / [END S] | Where the effect starts and ends, in seconds from the start of input.mp4. | 6.0 / 9.0 |
[VIEWS] | The slot for each card's view count. Claude fills it in order from the list of values you give. | 534K |
[1.07M, 534K, 133K, 5,488 ...] | Your own view counts, one per thumbnail, in the same order as the files in assets/thumbs/. The numbers shown only illustrate the format; replace them with real figures from your analytics. | The counts from your analytics, in file order |
[TOP LINE] | The small first line of the lower-third title. | videos I edited with Claude |
[MAIN WORD] | The big, extra-bold second line. One or two words read best. | MY WORK |
About Couch Wall
Couch Wall is a talking-head video effect that replaces the room behind you with a 3×4 grid of your past video thumbnails, each tagged with a small view count, while you stay in front. After the one-time setup, paste the prompt into Claude Code with Opus 5.5; Claude cuts you out with the person mask, builds the grid and renders it from your footage.
Use it when: Social-proof moments, such as when you mention how many people watched your earlier videos.
What the Couch Wall effect does
Couch Wall replaces the room behind you with a wall of your own work. Thumbnails of your past videos fill a 3×4 grid with thin gaps and rounded corners. Each card carries a small play-icon label with its view count, and a few have white title strips across the top, the way a video feed looks. You stay in front, cut out by the person mask, as if you were sitting in front of a wall built from your channel.
The cards do not appear all at once. They open from the centre outwards, 40 ms apart, so the wall seems to assemble itself behind you. Then the whole grid creeps forward by 4% over three seconds, a slow push known as the Ken Burns effect, which keeps the background from sitting completely still. A two-line title in the lower third names the moment: a small line on top, one heavy word underneath.
When it works and when it hurts
It fits the stretch where you establish why someone should listen: you have done this before, and here is the evidence. Showing the actual videos does that faster than describing them.
It hurts when the numbers are not real or not yours. The view-count labels are the point of the effect, and viewers can check your profile in seconds. Use the figures your analytics show, and leave a number out rather than round it up. It also hurts in the middle of a dense explanation. A wall of twelve images pulls attention away from what you are saying, so keep it to a few seconds.
How Claude builds it
Claude prepares the grid before it touches your video. It crops each thumbnail in assets/thumbs/ to fill its cell, rounds the corners, draws the view-count label and any title strip, and keeps every card as its own layer so the cards can scale in one by one.
For each frame in your range, the script scales the grid for the slow push-in, works out which cards have opened so far, and stacks three layers: the grid at the back, you on top through the person mask from the setup, then the lower-third title. Because the original background is dropped entirely, the quality of the mask edge decides how convincing the result is. ffmpeg then writes the frames into an MP4 with your audio unchanged.
Make it yours
The grid shape is a choice, not a requirement. Two columns and three rows give bigger, more readable cards; four columns make a dense mosaic where the labels become texture. You can replace view counts with other facts you can stand behind, such as publish dates or episode numbers, or drop the labels and let the thumbnails speak. Thumbnails that share one look read as a brand; a mix of styles reads as range. Change one thing at a time and watch the result before the next note.
Questions
Where do the view counts come from?
From you. Claude does not log in to Instagram, YouTube or TikTok; it writes the numbers you put in the prompt onto the cards. Copy them from your own analytics on the day you edit, in the short format the platform shows, and match them to the file order in assets/thumbs/.
What size should the thumbnails be?
Any size works, because Claude crops each image to fill its cell. On a 1080×1920 frame, a 3×4 grid gives cells roughly 350 px wide and 470 px tall, so vertical covers crop cleanly while wide 16:9 thumbnails lose their sides. Check that faces and titles survive the crop.
Do I need a green screen to film this?
No. The person mask from the setup separates you from whatever is behind you. A plain wall and soft, even light still help, because the cleaner the mask, the less of your real room leaks around your outline once the grid replaces it.
Can I change the grid or the title?
Yes. Ask for a different number of rows and columns, rounder corners or no title strips. Fewer cards make each label easier to read; more cards make a denser pattern. Describe the change in one sentence and ask Claude to leave the rest of the effect as it is.
Step by step
Run the setup once
In the folder with input.mp4, open Claude Code with Opus 5.5 and paste the setup prompt. Couch Wall depends on the person mask it creates, because the whole background gets replaced.
Fill assets/thumbs/ with your thumbnails
Add twelve thumbnails of your own videos, one per grid cell. Number the files (01.jpg, 02.jpg and so on) so you know which card gets which view count.
Look up your real view counts
Open your analytics and copy the current view count of each of those videos, in the same order as the files. Write them in the short format the platform uses, such as 534K.
Paste, fill in and review
Paste the Couch Wall prompt, fill in your start and end seconds, your view counts and the two title lines, and send. Watch the result and give notes in plain English, such as 'move the third card to the top row'.
You need: Setup prompt (run once) · Person mask · 12 thumbnails of your videos · Your real view counts
Tips
- Use your own real view counts. The numbers in the prompt only show the format; copy yours from your analytics and keep them accurate, since anyone can check your profile.
- Number the files in assets/thumbs/ and list the view counts in the same order, so each label lands on the right thumbnail.
- Put the thumbnails you most want seen in the top row and the outer columns. Your body covers much of the centre column.
- Twelve images fill the grid exactly. If you have fewer, ask Claude to repeat some in a different order rather than leave empty cells.
- Keep the range short; a few seconds is a good starting point. The wall is busy, and its job is to back up one sentence, not to carry a whole section.
If it goes wrong
A thin outline of your real room shows around your hair and shoulders.
Nothing of the original background survives, so every mask error is visible. Ask Claude to pull the mask edge in by 1 px for this range, smooth it over time and re-render only these seconds.
The view counts are too small to read on a phone.
Ask Claude to enlarge the labels and set them on a dark, semi-transparent pill. A grid with fewer, larger cards, such as 2×3, also helps.
The lower-third title collides with your running captions.
Ask Claude to hide the captions for this range or move them above the title. Change nothing else.
The thumbnails you care about are hidden behind you.
Rename the files so the key thumbnails land in the top row and the left and right columns, and reorder the view counts to match.
What it does not do
- The original background is removed completely, so the effect lives or dies on a clean person mask. Busy rooms, hair against a similar colour or fast gestures leave visible fringes.
- The grid is a flat image placed behind you. It does not pick up your room's light, so a warm-lit face in front of cool thumbnails can look pasted in.
- The labels show whatever you type. Claude does not fetch view counts from any platform, so keeping them accurate and current is up to you.
- Your body covers part of the grid for the whole shot, usually the centre column, so not all twelve cards are fully visible.
Sources
- Robust Video Matting (RVM) — GitHub — PeterL1n. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- Ken Burns effect — Wikipedia. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- Pillow documentation — Pillow. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- ffmpeg documentation — FFmpeg. Accessed October 21, 2026.
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