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Ozu produces two kinds of visual output: frames and an animatic. Frames are the still images. The animatic is what happens when you play them back in sequence, with timing and sound. Knowing the difference — and how the two relate — makes everything downstream easier to reason about.

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What a Frame is

A Frame is a single rendered image of one beat in your script. One beat, one frame. If your script analysis produces 42 beats, you’ll eventually generate 42 frames. Each frame carries the beat’s address — 1.1.3, for example — so it always knows where it lives in the story.

One beat = one frame

Every beat in the script produces exactly one rendered image. Beats are the atomic unit; frames are their visual form.

Tagged to the story

Every frame carries its Scene.Shot.Beat address, plus references to the Actors, Props, and Sets it contains.

Regenerable in place

You can reshot a single frame from the Storyboard Node without touching any of its neighbors.

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What an Animatic is

An Animatic is the timeline assembly of all your frames into a playable video — frames laid out in order, with durations, audio, color, and transitions. It’s the rough cut of your scene. The Timeline Node is where the animatic lives. You arrange frames on tracks, add voiceover and music, color-grade per beat, and insert transitions. Hit play and you’re watching your scene for the first time.
Frames are stills. The animatic is the movie. A storyboard gives you the shape of the story; the animatic gives you its pacing.

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Frames vs. Storyboard vs. Animatic

Three related words, one key distinction. A storyboard is static — a grid of panels. An animatic is dynamic — a video you can scrub, with sound and timing attached. Ozu produces both from the same set of frames.

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How they relate

The flow is one-way: frames feed the storyboard, the storyboard feeds the animatic.
  1. The Storyboard Node generates one frame per beat. You approve, reject, or reshot any of them.
  2. The Timeline Node reads those frames and assembles them into the animatic. Order, duration, audio, and color all live here.
  3. When you change a frame upstream, the animatic picks up the new version automatically.
You don’t re-render the animatic every time you tweak a frame — the Timeline just references whatever the current version of each frame is. Edit, swap, or reshot a frame and the animatic updates on the next playback.

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Output formats

You can export either the frames, the storyboard, or the animatic on its own:

PDF Storyboard

Every frame laid out as a printable booklet — one scene per page, beat notation in the margin. Useful for pitch meetings and production review.

ZIP Frames

Each frame as a separate image file, named by beat ID. Useful when you want to hand frames off to an illustrator or bring them into another tool.

MP4 Animatic

The full video — H.264, standard resolution, with audio baked in. Open it in Premiere, Final Cut, or DaVinci Resolve for further editing.

Scene, Shot, Beat

The three levels of hierarchy that frames and animatics inherit from.

Pipeline and Nodes

How the Storyboard Node and Timeline Node fit into the full pipeline.

Generate frames

How the Storyboard Node turns beats into visuals.

Edit the timeline

Assemble the animatic — tracks, playback, color, transitions.

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FAQ

Is a frame the same thing as a shot? No. A shot is a subdivision of a scene (one camera framing), and a shot usually contains several beats. One beat produces one frame, so one shot usually produces multiple frames. Can I have more than one frame per beat? The base model is one frame per beat. If you need alternate looks for the same beat — to pick the best take — reshot the beat from the Storyboard Node. Past versions are preserved in the asset history. Does the animatic have its own file, or is it just a playback of the frames? Both. In the Timeline Node the animatic is a live playback of your current frames. When you export, Ozu renders an MP4 with the frames, audio, and color grade baked in. Can I drop in my own footage instead of generated frames? Yes. Drag any image or video file onto the canvas and Ozu creates an Imported Asset. You can slot it into the storyboard and timeline alongside generated frames. What resolution are my frames? Frames are generated at the aspect ratio you picked at onboarding — 16:9, 4:3, 9:16, or 1:1 — and at the resolution tier selected for that generation. You can reshot at a different resolution later. Do I lose the animatic if I edit the storyboard? No. The Timeline references frames by their beat ID. If you reshot a frame or change its order, the animatic updates on the next play — your timeline edits (duration, audio, transitions) are preserved.