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Diamondala — water becomes a diamond
Every clear thing hides a kaleidoscope. Diamondala follows light as it refines water into ice, crystal and finally a diamond.
Primary effect: Diamondala — a custom kaleidoscope shader effect (Bring your own effect)
Starting footage: four vertical clips generated in Google Flow, each object floating over the same black plinth. I removed the Flow watermark before importing.
What I asked the agent: to build a custom shader instead of the library Kaleidoscope preset. When each object flares, the frame folds into mirrored diamond facets and blooms into the next object. It built a fold effect with controls for facet count, rotation, centre point and bloom.
What I refined myself: the first passes shrank the image to a dot inside a grey glow instead of mirroring it. I checked each fold frame by frame and sent specific corrections (fill the frame edge to edge, centre on the object, bloom only on the two peak frames, effect fully off outside the folds) until it rebuilt correctly. Facets escalate 6 → 12 → 24. A fourth fold on the diamond kept rendering as an inverted white field across several passes, so I cut it by hand and end on the clean diamond.
Sound: minimal ambient bed, glass SFX on each peak, my own voiceover.
Timeline: https://invideo.io/share/Diamondala-aMDIyuIRIsw
invideo Editor is free to try.
@invideo.io @invideo.creators #invideocontrachallenge #invideoeditor
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PASS-BY WIPE: he never leaves the centre of the frame, but every time something crosses the lens, he's in a new city.
Primary effect: Bring your own effect: Pass-By Wipe (custom GLSL shader transition, shapes + motion blur, no rotoscoping, no tracking)
THE IDEA
I started from a 3-second fashion clip I couldn't stop rewatching. A man walks past London townhouses, and the background hard-cuts every 0.2–0.4s, always on his footfall, while he stays locked in the same spot in the frame. Then it drops to a close-up of his shoes, and the pavement keeps changing under each step.
I wanted to push that "stride lock" one step further: what if his ride changed too? Bicycle → skateboard → hoverboard → longboard → walking, every switch seamless.
Before writing anything I read the #invideocontrachallenge feed. About half the real entries are highlight trails or bar reveals, and nobody had used a foreground pass-by or a story with a Sri Lankan ending. So the plan was to own a new transition and give it a reason to exist.
The story: "Every Way Home." Kavi carries a brown-paper diamond parcel through Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Lisbon and London in one afternoon. His feet walk across every city's pavement and land on the sand at Galle Face Green, Colombo, at sunset. He tears the paper off. It's a kite. The film opens floating on a hoverboard and ends with a kite flying.
THE EFFECT
Because Kavi is stride-locked (same position in the frame, same ground line, sideways tracking camera in every shot), a transition never has to track him. A foreground object just has to cross the lens. The Pass-By Wipe sweeps a vertical object right to left, against the direction of travel, and everything it has already passed becomes the next shot. It has motion-blurred edges and a small parallax push. It's one shader with two presets:
Steel Pillar: New York → Tokyo (a riveted El-train column)
Yellow Tram: Lisbon → London (cream roof, dark windows, yellow body)
HOW I WORKED (Claude + the invideo MCP)
I directed the whole build from Claude, connected to invideo through invideo's MCP server. Every image, clip, sound and edit was made inside my invideo project and timeline; nothing was finished in another editor.
Plan first. Claude broke down the reference frame by frame (cut timings, framing, grade), read the challenge rules and the submissions feed, and wrote the full story and shot plan. It asked me about style, setting, transport order, length and music. Nothing was generated until I said GO.
Character lock. Nano Banana Pro made Kavi's character sheet (front, side, back, board stance) and a London test frame. I approved him before anything else was spent.
24 keyframes, all built on one "Lock Frame" rule: full body centred, feet on a ground line at 85% of frame height, camera at waist height, 50mm. I rejected and regenerated four stills (one wrong face, one hoverboard that grew wheels, two short boards that should have been longboards) and removed a real brand logo from a vending machine.
25 clips. Kling 3 Omni (first frame) for the tracking shots, and Seedance 2.5 (first + last frame) for two morphs: the bicycle shrinking into a skateboard, and the hoverboard glow rippling into longboard wheels.
Music: ElevenLabs instrumental at 120 BPM. I checked the waveform before cutting and the beats land exactly every 0.5s, so every cut sits on a 15-frame grid. Twelve ElevenLabs SFX are synced to the transitions.
The agent wrote the effects straight into the invideo timeline as custom shaders with exposed controls: the Pass-By Wipe transition and a Stride Lock Film Grade on an adjustment layer.
WHAT THE AGENT BUILT
Pass-By Wipe controls: object colour, object width, accent colour, motion blur, edge feather, direction, object style (pillar / tram / flat panel), shading, parallax push, flip vertical.
Stride Lock Film Grade controls: warmth, soft contrast, faded blacks, saturation, halation, film grain, vignette.
WHAT I REFINED
Pillar colour: #2f4a3c → #14241c → #1c3327. The first render looked pale mint. The cause was that invideo blends in linear light, so I had the shader convert sRGB → linear.
Tram came out upside down (the shader's y axis runs bottom to top). Fixed, and kept a "Flip vertical" control.
Pillar width 0.34 → 0.30, shading 0.8 → 1.0, so it reads as riveted steel instead of a flat bar.
Tram preset: width 0.95, motion blur 0.75, length 18 frames (pillar: 14).
Stride Push into the feet: the first zoom aimed at his torso. I keyframed zoom 1.0 → 2.4 together with position (x −230, y −690) so it lands on the sneakers and matches the feet sequence.
City labels were hidden under the video track. Fixed the track order and moved them top-left.
Grade: warmth 0.30, halation 0.22, grain 0.05, vignette 0.22.
BY THE NUMBERS
49 seconds · 16:9 · 1080p · 5 cities + Colombo · 5 ways to move + the wind · 24 keyframes · 25 clips · 2 AI morphs · 1 custom transition (2 presets) · 1 custom grade · 12 SFX · ~700 credits · every frame generated and edited in invideo
@invideo.io #invideocontrachallenge #invideoeditor
invideo Editor is free to try.
Portal Cuts: Every Transition Opens Through Something Real
Primary effect: Bring your own effect – Shape-Matched Portal Transitions (custom shaders + alpha-matte shapes)
Five cuts in this train journey open through something that's actually in the shot: a train door, a rushing locomotive, a tunnel mouth, the arches of the Nine Arches Bridge, and the side of a moving train. The next clip plays inside that shape, then the camera pushes straight through into the new scene.
Built in invideo Editor using invideo's MCP connection with Claude. Claude read my timeline, captured frames, measured each shape and wrote every transition as a custom GLSL shader with editable controls, directly on my invideo timeline. No rotoscoping, no tracking, no other editor.
PROCESS NOTE
Starting footage: 7 vertical clips of train journeys (door view of the ocean, coast road from the window, beach railway, tunnel, Nine Arches Bridge, palm-side train, tea estate) plus a Pixabay music track, uploaded to invideo Editor.
What I asked the agent: I connected invideo's MCP server to Claude and directed it cut by cut: "turn the inside of this door into a portal", "use the real shape of the tunnel hole, not a rectangle", "open all the arch gaps under the bridge", "make the train body the portal, not the sky", "add the same effect to the locomotive". For each one it captured timeline frames, measured the shape and wrote a custom shader transition on the cut: the next clip appears inside the shape, plays, then the camera pushes through. Moving shapes (the approaching locomotive, the drone drift on the bridge) are keyframed, not tracked.
What I refined: I removed the warm glow on the tunnel, rejected versions that didn't look right (a sky cut-out and a floor-drop portal) and had them rebuilt, re-ordered the edit to open on the door shot, swapped in a new clip, and adjusted edge softness, push-through timing and scale using the controls the agent created. After exporting the final MP4 from invideo, I upscaled it with Topaz Astra 2.
LINKS
invideo timeline: https://invideo.io/share/Portal-Cuts-invideo-a2gooqayNEE
Instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeThWD-SydB/?exln=cDlvNzBucmpvaWps
@invideo.io #invideocontrachallenge #invideoeditor
invideo Editor is free to try.
🎬 Behind the scenes: here's how I built these portal transitions 👇
1️⃣ Uploaded my train clips and music to invideo Editor.
2️⃣ Connected invideo's MCP server to Claude, so it could read and edit my timeline directly.
3️⃣ Directed it cut by cut: "turn this door into a portal",...
THE PAPER BOAT: one page, the whole island 📄⛵
Primary effect: Bring your own effect – a pack of 11 paper transitions (custom GLSL shaders + a cut-out boat layer)
A girl near Ella tears one page from her school book, folds a boat and sets it in the monsoon drain. It travels down the Mahaweli to the sea at Trincomalee, where a boy unfolds it: "Hello from Ella ☺". Then he folds his own boat and sends it back.
Because the hero is paper, every cut is paper too, and each one fits its scene. The frame TEARS as she tears the page. The boat sails across and its WAKE opens the next shot. The page CURLS into the waterfall, then DROPS and SPLASHES into the paddy. It squeezes into ACCORDION pleats, and night soaks in like INK. The frame opens like a LETTER at sunrise, a WAVE carries us to the beach, the letter UNFOLDS, and its corners FOLD into a new boat.
The idea came from my childhood: making paper boats in the monsoon drains and wondering how far they'd go.
PROCESS NOTE
Starting footage: everything was generated inside invideo.
Reference sheets and keyframes: Nano Banana Pro, so the girl, boy and boat stay consistent
12 clips: VEO 3.1 Fast
The sailing boat: cut out with Bria BG Remove
9 paper and water sound effects: ElevenLabs SFX
Music: "Inspiring Childish Hope" from invideo's stock library
What I asked the agent: I connected invideo's MCP server to Claude and directed the build. The first version used the same Origami Fold on every cut, which felt repetitive, so I asked for a different transition for each scene, plus a real paper boat that sails across and opens the next shot with its wake. It wrote 11 custom shader transitions straight onto the timeline, each with its own controls: Page Tear, Origami Fold, Boat Wake Wipe, Page Curl, Drop + Splash, Accordion Pleats, Ink Bleed, Petal Unfold, Wave Wipe, Letter Unfold and Corner Fold. It also keyframed the cut-out boat in sync with the wake and put a sound effect on every cut.
X post - https://x.com/isumenuka/status/2108861018583765149?s=20
What I refined:
The wake read like a flat wipe, so I widened it (0.3 → 0.45) and made the boat bigger (0.36 → 0.48).
The curl was a thin sliver, so I raised the radius