Condor PMV Maker Wiki

Getting started#

What it does#

Condor PMV Maker turns a pool of clips and a song into a finished PMV. It listens to the track first — the beat, the tempo, and where the song is quiet, building, dropping, peaking or breaking down — then cuts your clips on the beat, picks the moment inside each clip that suits that part of the song, dresses the cuts with transitions, effects and a colour grade, and exports a finished MP4. Optionally it also mixes in the clips' own sound, puts text and spoken lines on the beat, and writes matching funscripts.

Everything runs on your own PC. Your clips are analysed locally and never uploaded anywhere.

Installing and signing in#

• Download the installer from the Patreon post and run it. It needs 64-bit Windows.
• Everything is in the installer — including the video encoder and the AI libraries. The AI models (the clip-tagging model and the voice model) download the first time you use a feature that needs them, and are kept in your Windows user profile, so reinstalling the app never downloads them again.
• If your copy asks you to sign in, press Sign in with Patreon. Your browser opens; once Patreon confirms your membership (Creator tier or above), come back to the app. The other buttons on that screen: Try again, Test connection (checks this PC can reach condorpmv.com and copies a report you can paste into a message), Promo code (redeem a trial or extension code), Join on Patreon and Quit. Signing in shares only your membership status — never your clips. Once you're in, the header shows Patreon · tier · Sign out.
• The version number sits in the bottom-right corner of the header (currently v2.0). Clicking the Condor PMV Maker logo in the top-left corner opens this website.

Hardware: any normal Windows PC runs it. An NVIDIA graphics card makes exports faster and the AI tools much faster. See Requirements on the Maker page.

Your first PMV in seven steps#

1. Add your clips. Under Source Folders, press ＋ Add Folders… and pick one or more folders (Ctrl-click or Shift-click for several). Tick the folders you want — ticked folders feed the media pool below.
2. Add a song. Open Music & Beat Sync, press Choose Music…, and tick Cut on beats (beat sync) and Match full song length.
3. Pick a cut length. Cut every 2 beats is a good start. For a more musical feel, turn on Variable clip timing under Timing (see Timing).
4. Pick a look. Under Transitions & Effects, choose a transition and an effect — or Random (all) to let the app choose for each part of the song.
5. Pick a size. Under Output, 1920×1080 at 30 fps is a safe choice for most players.
6. Review the plan. Press Preview / Timeline. The app works out every cut, shows it on a timeline and renders a quick low-resolution preview. Reroll any shot you don't like.
7. Export. Press Export with this plan in the timeline (or Export Video… in the main window) and choose where to save. Watch the result in the Media Browser.

The window at a glance#

The vertical bar between the left and right halves can be dragged too. Both bars remember where you left them.

Building your clip pool#

The pool is the set of clips an edit can draw from. You can feed it whole folders, hand-picked files, a theme search, a hand-built ★ Selected pool or a mix of tags.

Source folders#

• ＋ Add Folders… — add one or more folders. Subfolders are included automatically (hidden and system folders are skipped). You can also drop a folder onto the media list.
• Tick a folder to feed its clips into the pool. Include: All / None tick or untick every folder at once.
• － Remove takes the selected folders out of the list. The analysis cache is kept, so adding a folder back later is instant.
• ↻ Refresh rescans ticked folders for new or removed files. Folders on a drive that isn't connected stay in the list, marked unavailable, and come back when the drive does.
• ✂ Slice Videos… opens the Slicer.

Your folders and their ticks are part of your session: they're remembered automatically next time you open the app, and profiles never change them.

Right-click a folder

The media pool#

The All media tab shows the clips from your ticked folders, plus any files you added by hand with ＋ Add Media… (those are always kept).

Supported files. Video: .mp4, .mov, .avi, .mkv, .webm, .m4v, .wmv. Photos: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .bmp, .webp, .tiff, .tif. Music: .mp3, .wav, .flac, .m4a, .aac, .ogg.

Previewing, cropping and the right-click menu#

Double-click a clip to preview it with sound. Right-click a clip (or several) for:

Unreadable and excluded clips#

While your pool loads, the app quietly checks that each file can actually be decoded — including its ending, which is where a half-finished download breaks. A clip that fails is flagged, and exports skip it automatically. Above the pool, ⚠ N unreadable is a link: click it to see those clips and exclude them. Excluded clips are hidden from the pool, the Tagged tab and Vs. exports, and stay excluded across refreshes and restarts. Nothing is deleted from disk; the N excluded link lets you review them and include any of them again.

★ Selected pool#

Build your own pool from any folders and any themes, then export exactly that.

• In All media, pick clips (click, Ctrl-click, Shift-click) and press ★ Add to Selected.
• Or apply a theme and press Add theme matches — every clip the theme picked is added. Apply another theme, or tick other folders, and add again: everything collects in ★ Selected.
• Add all shown adds every clip currently listed (it respects the filter box).
• You can also drop files or folders straight onto the ★ Selected tab.

While Use the Selected pool for export is ticked (it switches on by itself when you add the first clip), Preview and Export use exactly these clips — the theme and folder ticks don't filter them further. － Remove (or Delete) takes clips out; Clear Selected empties it. Neither touches the files or the All media list.

Tags and the Tagged tab#

To tag clips, pick them in any tab and press T (or right-click → 🏷 Tag…). Tick existing tags, or type new ones separated by commas — for example dance, close-up, outdoor. A tag that only some of the picked clips have shows half-ticked and is left alone unless you change it.

The 🏷 Tagged tab lists every tagged clip, from every folder, with your tags as chips along the top:

• Click a tag to cycle it: off → ✓ include → ✕ exclude → off. Right-click it to include, exclude or clear it, or to delete the tag from every clip.
• Find tag… and Sort: (A–Z or Most used) help when you have dozens of tags.
• Match: Any picked tag shows clips with at least one included tag; All picked tags shows only clips that have them all. Excluded tags always remove clips.
• Use tagged clips for export makes Preview and Export use exactly the clips shown here (it turns ★ Selected off — it's one or the other).
• Clear tag filter resets the chips.

Tags can also come from the Slicer, Auto-tag, or Tag clips by subfolder name.

🔊 Audio clips#

This tab decides which clips are heard when Clip audio is on (see Music & beat sync). Add clips with 🔊 Add to Audio clips, right-click → 🔊 Hear this clip, or by dropping files on the tab; adding the first one switches Clip audio on if it was off. Their own sound plays on the cuts where they appear, and every other clip stays silent.

• Leave the tab empty and every clip in the edit is heard.
• － Remove (or Delete) stops a clip being heard; it stays in the edit.
• On a triptych or grid, it's the centre (lead) panel that's heard, so a clip is heard only on the cuts where it plays there.

Which clips an export uses#

The line above Preview / Timeline always says what the export will draw from (for example Export uses: All media — 715 clips). When more than one source is switched on, the first that applies wins:

1. Paired folders on → its two folders.
2. Vs. mode on → its two folders (a theme narrows each side to its own matches, unless it barely matches that side).
3. ★ Selected with Use the Selected pool for export ticked → exactly those clips.
4. Tagged with Use tagged clips for export ticked → the clips the tag filter shows.
5. Otherwise All media — your ticked folders and hand-added files, minus anything a theme dims.

The Use: videos/photos filter applies in every case.

AI tools#

Theme search, the Slicer and Auto-tag all use the same clip-tagging model (CLIP). It downloads once, the first time you use one of them, and everything runs on your PC — nothing is uploaded. An NVIDIA graphics card makes them much faster.

Theme search#

Describe what the edit should show in the box at the top of the window, then press Enter or Apply theme.

• Several ideas: separate them with commas — red dress, neon club lights, beach at sunset. A clip that matches any of them counts.
• Avoid something: put a minus (or not) in front — -text overlay.
• Strength: Light keeps the best-matching 60% of the pool, Strong the best 35%, Strict only the top 15%.
• The first run reads every clip in the pool (a progress bar shows how far; press the button again to cancel). After that, only new clips need reading.
• Matching clips stay bright and show their score (match 87); the rest are dimmed and left out of an All media export. Sort: Theme match puts the best first, and Add theme matches copies them into ★ Selected.
• Clear removes the theme, and every clip is eligible again.

Slicer — cut long videos into clips#

Press ✂ Slice Videos… (or right-click a source folder). The Slicer samples each long video, recognises what's happening in each sample, and cuts runs of the same thing into short clips saved under <output>/<label>/ — ready to use, sorted and tagged. Recognition is best-effort, so skim the results.

It runs in the background with progress, a log and Cancel; clips finished before a cancel are kept and tagged. Point it at a VR film and you get short VR clips, each still marked as VR.

Auto-tag#

Right-click a source folder → 🤖 Auto-tag clips (AI)… to tag the clips already in it. Frames are sampled across each clip and the clip is tagged with what's found. Nothing is cut or moved.

• Labels: the Slicer's built-in list, or My own labels — type them comma-separated (dance, bikini, beach, gym, selfie), or press Use my existing tags. Plain words or short phrases work best, and each becomes a tag exactly as typed. A clip can get several of your labels.
• Leave a clip untagged when none of these fit — each label has to beat a hidden "something else" choice, so a short list doesn't force every clip onto its nearest label.
• Strictness: Relaxed catches more but adds more wrong tags; Strict tags less but is rarely wrong; Balanced sits between.
• Tags per clip: the top label only, or up to 3 labels that each fill at least 30% of the clip.
• Skip clips already tagged with one of the labels — re-running then only does new clips.

Music & beat sync#

The song drives the edit. The first time a track is used it's analysed for its beats, tempo, energy and sections (low, build, drop, peak, break); the result is cached, so it's instant after that.

Timing#

Transitions & effects#

The long dropdowns open as a grid grouped by style. Type a few letters to filter it — Enter takes the first match, Esc closes it.

Transitions#

68 transitions in 11 groups, plus two random options:

Effects#

Effects play over each clip. They're grouped as Zoom & Motion (drifts, sways, zooms, speed ramp), Beat-synced (flashes, pulses, bounces, shakes, strobes), PMV / Music video (hit zooms, bloom pulses, chrome flashes, speed lines, light leaks), Neon & Glow, Retro & Stylize (RGB split, VHS, film grain, vignette, toon), Hyper-intense, Bubblegum pop chaos, Overstimulation, and Audio-reactive & glitch — plus None and the two random options.

Random pools and weights#

Set a transition or effect to Random (selected…), then press Pick… (or Choose transitions…) to choose what it picks from. Tick the ones to randomise between, use each group's all / none, or Select all / Clear. Each choice has a weight: 1.0 is normal, 2.0 picks it twice as often.

Random picks never repeat back-to-back, avoid the last few choices, spread across groups, and lean toward what suits the part of the song at each cut — calmer in the quiet parts, wilder on the drops.

The random seed#

Random seed: decides everything that's left to chance — clip order, the random transition and effect picks, and the schedule (and in Vs. mode, which clips and moments each side gets and which side opens). Preview and Export share it, so the same seed with the same settings always gives the same edit. Press 🎲 Re-roll for a new variation from the same clips. A new seed clears any shot list you reviewed in the timeline, so the next Preview plans from scratch.

Grades and finishing#

Text & spoken overlays#

Short lines painted over the video, landing on the downbeat — and, if you like, spoken as well. The music decides the pacing: a line arrives on a downbeat, holds one bar on a drop against four in a break, and is bigger where the track is loud. Text needs a song, and it's drawn last, so the grade and sharpen never touch it.

On screen#

Spoken lines#

The same lines, read aloud on the downbeat they're seen on. The voice model downloads the first time you use it and is generated on your PC; an NVIDIA graphics card makes it much quicker.

Screen pump & Condor signature#

Clip selection#

Which clip lands in each cut, and which moment of it is used.

Paired folders and Vs. mode also live in this section — see Vs. mode & paired folders.

Layout & panels#

Multi-panel layouts run every panel as its own stream — its own cuts, transitions, effects and clip moments — composed into one frame. Panel 1 is the main one (the centre of a triptych, the top-left of the grid) and uses the main Transition and Effect; the others use the Panels settings.

Output#

Intro & outro clips#

Press Choose… next to Intro clip: or Outro clip: to put a clip before or after the edit — your channel intro, a logo card, an end screen. ✕ removes it.

• A video plays whole; a picture holds for 3 seconds.
• It gets the grade and sharpen, but no effect or transition, and plays with its own sound.
• The music starts with the first cut, after the intro. With Match full song length and Fit intro/outro inside the song length on, the whole file is exactly the length of the song.
• A clip that can't be read is skipped, and the status line says so.
• They work in VR exports too — see Intro, outro & sound in VR.

Vs. mode & paired folders#

Two ways to put two folders on screen together: paired, where they simply play side by side, and Vs., where the song stages a fight between them.

Paired folders#

Tick Paired folders under Clip Selection and choose Folder A and Folder B. Panel 1 comes from A, panel 2 from B, panel 3 from A again — and each panel's clip is chosen to go with whatever the panel beside it is playing, matched or contrasted per Panel pairing. The lead panel changes hands every couple of cuts, so neither folder owns the biggest panel.

• Needs a multi-panel layout (2-screen, triptych, grid or Random). On Single there's nothing to pair, so the edit runs from folder A — the app tells you.
• It draws from its two folders whatever is ticked in Source Folders.
• It's Vs. mode without the contest: no rounds, face-offs, laser or side colours. Turning Vs. mode on turns it off.

Vs. mode#

Press Vs Mode on the profile bar (it opens Clip Selection), then choose Side A and Side B. While it's on, the export uses only these two folders — they don't need to be ticked. A theme narrows each side to its own matches.

With a song, the song stages the fight:

• Rounds — one side owns a section full-screen, then hands it over.
• Face-offs on the drops — side by side, split by a neon laser that swells on the beat. When a round changes hands, the laser shoves the losing side off the screen.
• Showdown — over the ending the sides trade faster and faster, then hold on both.

Without a song, Hand off every N cuts decides how long each side holds the screen.

The Vs. timeline#

Place every round and face-off by ear. The strip shows the song: blue is Side A full-screen, orange Side B, and blue→orange a face-off.

• Drag a boundary to move it — it snaps to beats; hold Shift for free movement.
• Double-click to split a part; right-click for Split here, Merge with previous part, Start showdown here or No showdown.
• ▶ Play plays the song so you can place things where you hear them; Split at playhead and Showdown at playhead use the play position.
• Selected part: sets whether the selected part is Side A, Side B or a face-off.
• Showdown ending, starting at turns the showdown on or off and sets where it starts (or drag the red marker).
• Reset to auto goes back to the plan from the song's sections: drops and peaks become face-offs, rounds alternate (the seed picks who opens), and the showdown covers the last ~18%.

Your layout is saved per song.

VR mode#

Cut 180° and 360° footage into a VR PMV. Press VR Mode on the profile bar (or tick VR mode under Output). The picture is never reframed — cutting a sphere is fine, but scaling or cropping one moves where things are rather than how they're framed — so VR mode only cuts.

Formats and detection#

The app works out what each clip is — 180° or 360° equirectangular, or fisheye; one eye, two eyes side by side, or stacked — from, in order: the file's own VR marking, its filename, the picture itself, and finally its shape. The answer is remembered, so it's instant next time.

If a clip is read wrongly, tags in its filename settle it. Separate them with _, -, . or a space:

For example scene_180_LR.mp4 is 180° side by side. Every clip in a VR edit has to be the same kind of VR — one projection and one eye layout — or the result would play inside out; the export says so and stops. Flat clips in the pool are left out, with a note. Clips of different sizes are scaled to the largest, which is safe because the shape is kept.

Stand-ins (why the first VR export takes longer)#

The beat matching and clip picking need an ordinary flat picture, so the first time a VR clip is used the app makes a small flat stand-in of it: the forward view from inside the headset, on the same timeline as the original. For a long film that takes a while — progress and the time left are shown, and an NVIDIA card speeds it up a lot. Stand-ins are kept, so every later export of those clips skips this step. The plan is made on the stand-ins, then the real VR files are cut.

Stand-ins are stored in %USERPROFILE%\.condor_pmv\vr_proxies. That folder can be deleted at any time to reclaim space; stand-ins are rebuilt when needed. Cancelling — or closing the app — stops a stand-in build straight away.

VR transitions, looks and effects#

How a transition feels in a headset depends on whether it moves the picture, and people differ in what bothers them. So all 30 VR transitions are offered, grouped by how much they move:

Random (all) or Random (selected…) with Choose transitions… picks per join; the selected pool starts with the ones that move nothing. A transition straddles the cut, so the picture still changes exactly on the beat; where the clips either side are too short to lend it the frames, that join stays a cut.

Looks: Vibrant, Teal & Orange, Neon night, Warm film, Punchy B&W (or None) — colour only, so the geometry is untouched. Effects: Film grain, or a Comfort vignette that darkens the edge of each eye separately. One effect runs through the whole edit.

Intro, outro and sound in VR#

• A VR intro or outro in the same layout as the edit plays as it is; one in a different layout (a 360° mono clip in a 180° side-by-side edit, say) is converted.
• A flat clip or picture is shown on a screen in front of the viewer — black all round, the same picture to both eyes, up to 80° wide (or 55° tall for portrait clips).
• As in a flat export, the bookend plays with its own sound and the music starts with the first cut.
• Clip audio is taken from the original VR films (the stand-ins have no sound).

Funscripts#

Tick Generate .funscript with export and a script is written next to the video with the same name (video.mp4 → video.funscript), so script players load it automatically. With a song, strokes lock to the beat grid (respecting the start offset and any intro); without one, there's one full stroke per cut. The same music and settings always give the same script.

Extra axes#

For multi-axis devices. Each ticked axis is written as its own script beside the video (video.twist.funscript and so on), which multi-axis players pick up automatically. Needs a song.

Script an existing video#

Script an existing video… (at the bottom of the Funscript section) writes funscripts for a video you already have, without building a compilation. The video is only analysed — never modified or re-encoded — and the scripts are written next to it.

• Beat grid from: Audio, falling back to the picture; Audio only (best when there's music on it); or Picture only (peaks in on-screen movement become the beat, for videos with no usable sound).
• Every stroke option from above is available, including the library, extra axes and Rhythm from. Press Generate scripts.

Preview & timeline#

Preview / Timeline works out the whole shot list — which clip lands in which cut, with what transition and effect — without rendering it, and shows it as a timeline. A quick low-resolution preview (480 px wide, up to 24 fps) renders automatically and loads into the player at the top.

• Each cut is a card as wide as it is long, so long holds are wide and fast cuts are slivers.
• Click a cut to select it (and jump the player there); Ctrl-click for several. The panel shows which clip it is, which seconds of the clip it uses, and its transition and effect.
• Double-click a cut, or press 🎲 Reroll selected, to swap in a different clip without touching the timing, effects or any other cut. Choose clip… lets you pick the clip yourself; Reroll all rerolls every cut.
• After rerolling, the preview is marked out of date — press ⟳ Render preview to see your changes.
• Playback: Space plays and pauses; the 1× / 2× / 3× buttons set the speed. Follow keeps the playing cut in view; Zoom and Fit size the timeline; drag the grey bar above the filmstrip to resize it.
• Export with this plan renders the full-quality video from exactly the shot list you approved. Close renders nothing.

Exporting#

• Export Video… asks where to save (it starts in the folder you last exported to, or your Videos folder) and renders the final video at your chosen resolution and frame rate. It uses the plan you approved in the timeline, if there is one; otherwise it plans fresh from the current pool and settings.
• Before you start, Estimated video length shows how long it will be. The status line, the progress bar and Cancel Export sit underneath.
• Flat exports are H.264 MP4, encoded on your NVIDIA graphics card when you have one and on the processor otherwise. VR exports are HEVC.
• If an export is ever interrupted, what's rendered so far is still a playable file.
• Funscripts and extra-axis scripts are written beside the video.
• The first export after adding new clips or a new song takes longer while they're analysed; that analysis is cached, so later exports go straight to rendering.

Media Browser & The Handy#

📂 Media Browser…, in the bottom-right corner, shows everything you've exported — newest first, with length, size and date, and a marker on the videos that have a funscript beside them.

• Choose folder…, Open folder, Refresh, Include subfolders and Filter by name… find what you're after.
• Videos play with sound; Space plays and pauses.
• Show in folder opens Explorer on the file; Delete… deletes the video and its funscript from disk, after asking.

Playing on The Handy#

1. Put the device on wi-fi and copy its connection key from the Handy app.
2. In the Media Browser's The Handy box, paste it into Key: and press Connect. The key is kept with the app's settings on this PC.
3. Pick a video that has a funscript and press play. The device follows the player: play starts it where you are, pause stops it, and skipping makes it catch up.

• Stroke: from / to sets how much of the device's travel to use.
• Re-send script uploads the script again; Re-sync clock fixes drift — playback is timed against Handy's server clock, so the app agrees a clock with it first.
• The Handy follows normal speed only. While you watch at 2× or 3× it's paused.
• The device fetches scripts over the internet, so the PC needs a connection.

Profiles & sessions#

Profiles#

• Save… saves every setting in the right-hand panel under a name; Load applies the selected profile; Delete removes it.
• A profile never includes your source folders or media pool, so one style works on any clips.
• Profiles are small files in %USERPROFILE%\.config\media_slideshow_maker\profiles — copy them to another PC to take your styles with you.

What's remembered automatically#

Your session carries over between launches without saving anything: source folders and their ticks, the ★ Selected pool, the 🔊 Audio clips, the theme you typed, which settings sections were open, the position of the dividers, and where you last exported to.

A Condor-style starting point#

To get close to the look of Condor PMV's own releases, try this and save it as a profile:

• Music & Beat Sync: beat sync on, Match full song length on.
• Timing: Variable clip timing on, 1–4 beats, Dynamic cuts on, Pace edits with music intensity on.
• Layout: Triptych (mirrored sides).
• Screen pump: Bounce at a soft intensity — and no Bounce or Shake effects on the panels; the pump does the dancing. Condor signature on.
• Clip selection: Smart clip order, Align clip motion to beats, Cast clips to the song, Skip screens and Prefer people on; Smart fullscreen framing on (Output).
• Transitions: Random (selected…) from a pool you like; Iris tunnel works well on the build into a drop.

Speed, storage & the analysis cache#

• Analysis cache. Each song's beats and energy, and each clip's motion, colour and screen checks, are worked out once and cached in %USERPROFILE%\.cache\media_slideshow_maker. The size is shown next to Clear analysis cache. Clearing it asks you to type CONFIRM, because everything then has to be re-analysed on the next export — which can take several minutes on a big library.
• VR stand-ins live in %USERPROFILE%\.condor_pmv\vr_proxies and can be deleted at any time (see Stand-ins).
• AI models are downloaded once into your user profile and survive reinstalling.
• An NVIDIA graphics card speeds up exports (hardware encoding), clip analysis and VR (hardware decoding), and the AI tools.
• Closing the app stops anything it was still encoding, so no leftover work keeps your computer busy.

Troubleshooting#

Still stuck? Email CondorPMV@gmail.com with what you were doing and the message the app showed.

Keyboard & mouse shortcuts#

Glossary#

Beat grid

The times of every beat in the song. Cuts, text and funscript strokes all land on it.

Section

A part of the song by energy: low, build, drop, peak or break. Many settings behave differently in each.

Cut / slot

One stretch of the edit showing one clip.

Pool

The clips an export can draw from. See Which clips an export uses.

Seed

The number behind every random choice. Same seed + same settings = same edit.

Profile

A saved set of settings, without folders or clips.

Primary panel

Panel 1 of a multi-panel layout — the centre of a triptych. It's the one heard with clip audio.

Bookend

An intro or outro clip.

Stand-in

A small flat copy of a VR clip, used for planning a VR edit.

Equirectangular

The usual way a 180° or 360° sphere is stored in a flat video frame.

Side by side / top-bottom

How two eyes are packed into one VR frame.

Funscript

A script of positions over time that a device such as The Handy plays in sync with the video.

Sidecar script

An extra-axis funscript saved next to the video, such as video.twist.funscript.

Rails

The ends of a device's travel (0 and 100).