PDF to Video

Turn a PDF (whitepaper, ebook chapter, slide deck export, research paper) into a short summary video. Use when the source is a PDF URL or a PDF the agent can upload to public storage first.

PDF → summary video

Take a PDF URL and produce a short summary video. Internally this routes through article-to-video once the PDF text has been extracted by Revid's scraper.

When to use this skill

• Source is a public PDF URL (whitepaper, paper, ebook, slide export).
• Goal is a 30–90 s summary, not a full reading.
• For HTML articles use revid-article-to-short.
• For local PDFs the agent must first upload to public storage (S3, Supabase Storage, etc.) so Revid can fetch it.

Inputs

Field	Required	Notes
url	yes	Public PDF URL (must be reachable, no auth)
aspectRatio	no	Default 9:16
targetDuration	no	Default 60 (s); raise to 90 s for dense papers

Step-by-step

1. Confirm the URL ends in .pdf or returns Content-Type: application/pdf.
2. Set source.scrapingPrompt to bias the summary toward what the user cares about ("Focus on the methodology section", "Focus on the executive summary", "Pull the 3 biggest takeaways").
3. POST /render with the payload below.
4. Poll /status.

API call template

http

POST /api/public/v3/render
Host: www.revid.ai
Content-Type: application/json
key: $REVID_API_KEY

json

{
  "workflow": "article-to-video",
  "source": {
    "url": "{PDF_URL}",
    "scrapingPrompt": "Extract the executive summary and the 3 biggest takeaways. Skip references and appendices."
  },
  "aspectRatio": "9:16",
  "voice":    { "enabled": true, "stability": 0.65, "speed": 0.95, "language": "en-US" },
  "captions": { "enabled": true, "position": "middle", "autoCrop": true },
  "music":    { "enabled": true, "syncWith": "beats" },
  "media": {
    "type": "stock-video",
    "density": "medium",
    "animation": "soft",
    "quality": "pro",
    "imageModel": "good",
    "videoModel": "pro"
  },
  "options": {
    "targetDuration": 60,
    "summarizationPreference": "summarize",
    "soundEffects": true,
    "hasToGenerateCover": true,
    "coverTextType": "title"
  },
  "render": { "resolution": "1080p", "frameRate": 30 }
}

Examples

• examples/whitepaper.json
• examples/run.sh

Failure modes

Symptom	Fix
scrape failed	PDF behind auth or login wall. Re-host the PDF on public storage.
Summary skips the section the user cares about	Tighten scrapingPrompt (be specific: section names, page ranges).
Visuals are abstract / off-topic	PDFs rarely have crawlable hero images. Pre-render a few key figures as images and pass them in media.provided.
Voice rushes through technical terms	Lower voice.speed to 0.9.

See also

• revid-article-to-short for HTML.
• revid-script-with-custom-media for full visual control.