Decision
Every time DeckTalk computes is derived from the start and end times of spoken words. A cue names a phrase from the narration, never a second. Every take ends with a time for every word, supplied by the voice itself or by an aligner run over the take’s audio against the script, and that list is the only clock in the system.Why
The thing that makes a narrated video expensive to change is that a picture is pinned to a second. Rewrite one sentence and every picture after it is wrong, so the fix is to cut the whole video again by hand. If a picture is pinned to a phrase instead, the same rewrite moves the pictures with it and nobody touches a timeline. This also makes the video checkable.verify knows which word a reveal was supposed to follow, so a
reveal that arrives late is a measured number carrying the code CUE_OFF rather than something a
person has to notice.
What it rules out
- A voice with no word timestamps never supplies a clock of its own. An aligner times its audio against the script, so the clock is still the words, and the provider note says where each source of word times sits.
- A cue cannot be placed between two words that are never spoken, so a picture that belongs to no phrase has to earn a phrase in the script.
- A section with no narration resolves no cues. The
cuestage reports each one asCUE_UNRESOLVEDrather than writing a cue list the recorder would then play blind. - No attribute on a deck page says when a cue fires. The page owns what a thing looks like and what it
means, and
cues.jsonowns when it happens.