---
name: appariciojunior-broll
description: "How to find, watch and cut B-roll in a vlog - clips with no speech placed by time between talking clips, chosen by their action and story, not a fixed length. Use when footage mixes talking clips (A-roll) and silent clips, or when the creator says the B-roll pacing feels wrong."
license: "NOASSERTION"
metadata:
  decimalai-skill-id: "d9ab31aa-8508-462c-b78f-e79f36c4a546"
  decimalai-version-id: "8bbbf676-1b38-42da-8da4-57b7c763d9c9"
  decimalai-version: "1"
  decimalai-body-sha256: "3ab148345c17a1ee13d9357ded856761b5d713afa5243494d56414b46f00fe56"
  decimalai-name: "appariciojunior/broll"
  decimalai-format: "1"
  decimalai-invocation: "model"
  decimalai-category: "design-media"
  decimalai-source: "https://app.decimal.ai/s/appariciojunior-broll@1/SKILL.md"
---
# B-roll

A transcript-only cut silently drops every clip without words. Don't.

## Spot it
- A clip with **0 words** is B-roll.
- A clip whose "words" are **song lyrics or another language** (radio, a café) is B-roll too: check what the transcript says before treating it as speech.
- All clips recorded in sequence → keep the recorded order; B-roll sits where it was shot.

## Watch it (the step people skip)
Pulling 5 frames per clip led to bad cuts. **Look at 2 frames per second** (a contact sheet, 8 per row, small) for every B-roll clip, and read what the creator says right before and after it. Questions:
- What is the action? Where does it start and resolve?
- Is there a natural transition? Example from a real edit: the camera goes *into* a backpack (frames go black) in one clip, and the next clip starts black and comes *out* of the bag onto an airport table. Cutting black-to-black makes a free, perfect transition; cutting by fixed length destroyed it.
- Which part is steady and well framed? Which part is out of focus or the operator fumbling?
- Is it vertical (phone held upright)? It will crop to the middle in a horizontal/4:3 frame: flag it.

## Cut it
- Segment by time: `{"clip": "…", "broll": true, "in": s, "out": s, "why": "…"}`.
- Length follows the action: a quick cutaway 2–4 s, a transition sequence 6–8 s, an outro over a drive 10–15 s. A soft-focus shot gets the shortest slot.
- 100% framing, colour the timeline pieces green so A/B roll read at a glance.
- Natural sound stays on the voice track, but: a B-roll clip that is **silent** gets normalized up by +30 dB (pure hiss) → set it back to 0 dB; a clip with a **radio/music** in it fights the music bed → lower it 8 dB or so.
- The music rises on B-roll (see `music-and-sound`).

## Report
Each B-roll: timeline time, what it shows, why that range, anything flagged (vertical, soft focus).