⚾ Loups

Automated video chapter generation using template matching and OCR

Automatically scan any video with on-screen text overlays to extract information and generate timestamped YouTube chapters! 🎥✨

Originally designed for Lights Out HB fastpitch softball games, but works with any video content that has consistent identifying frames or text overlays.

Links: Repository • Documentation • Issues • PyPI • Author

✨ What is Loups?

Loups uses template matching and OCR to automatically scan videos, detect specific frames with identifying information, and generate timestamped chapters.

Use cases include:

• 🥎 Sports Games - Track player at-bats, shifts, or appearances (originally designed for fastpitch softball)
• 🎓 Educational Content - Chapter markers for different topics or speakers
• 🎙️ Podcasts/Interviews - Detect guest name overlays or topic cards
• 🎮 Gaming - Mark level changes, character selections, or game modes
• 📺 TV Shows/Series - Detect episode titles or scene markers
• 🎬 Any Video - With consistent text overlays or identifying frames

📑 Table of Contents

• Installation
• Quick Start
• Thumbnail Extraction
• Common Workflows
• CLI Options
• Features
• How It Works
• Creating Custom Templates
• Tips & Best Practices
• Contributing
• License

📦 Installation

Requirements: Python 3.13 or higher

Supported Platforms: Linux • macOS • Windows (tested via CI/CD)

# Install from PyPI
pip install loups

# Verify installation
loups --help

Note: If you're using an older Python version, you may need to upgrade:

# Check your Python version
python --version

# Install with specific Python version if needed
python3.13 -m pip install loups

🚀 Quick Start

# 🎬 For Lights Out HB games (uses bundled template)
loups game_video.mp4

Expected output:

🥎 Scanning video for batter at-bats...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100% 0:05:23

Found 12 batters:
0:00:00 Game Start
0:01:15 Sarah Johnson #7
0:03:42 Emma Martinez #12
0:05:23 Lily Garcia #9
...

More examples:

# 🎨 For any other video (use your own template)
loups -t my_template.png video.mp4

# 💾 Save results to a file for YouTube chapters
loups -o chapters.txt video.mp4

# 🤫 Quiet mode for automation/batch processing
loups -q -o chapters.txt video.mp4

Important: Options must be specified before the video argument.

🖼️ Thumbnail Extraction

Loups can automatically extract thumbnails from your videos using SSIM (Structural Similarity Index) matching!

# Extract thumbnail using default template
loups video.mp4 thumbnail

# Use custom thumbnail template
loups video.mp4 thumbnail --thumbnail-template my_thumb_template.png

# Customize output location
loups video.mp4 thumbnail --thumbnail-output ./thumbnails/game_thumb.jpg

# Fine-tune the matching
loups video.mp4 thumbnail --thumbnail-threshold 0.85 --thumbnail-scan-duration 180

# Extract thumbnail during chapter scanning (options BEFORE video)
loups --extract-thumbnail --thumbnail-output thumb.jpg video.mp4

How Thumbnail Extraction Works

1. 🎯 Template Matching - Scans video frames from the beginning using SSIM scoring
2. ⚡ First-Match Strategy - Stops as soon as a frame exceeds the similarity threshold
3. 💾 Automatic Saving - Saves the matched frame as a JPEG thumbnail
4. ⏱️ Configurable Duration - Only scans the first N seconds (default: 120s)

Key Features:

• 🎯 SSIM-based matching - More accurate than simple template matching
• ⚡ Efficient scanning - Stops at first match, doesn't scan entire video
• 🎨 Default template support - Include thumbnail_template.png in package data
• 🔧 Highly configurable - Control threshold, scan duration, and frame sampling

Options:

• --thumbnail-template - Path to template image (uses default if not specified)
• --thumbnail-output - Where to save thumbnail (default: <video>-thumbnail.jpg in current directory)
• --thumbnail-threshold - Minimum SSIM score (0.0-1.0, default: 0.35)
• --thumbnail-scan-duration - Max seconds to scan from start (default: 120)
• --thumbnail-frames-per-second - Frame sampling rate (default: 3)

📋 Common Workflows

📹 Creating YouTube Chapters

# Scan video and save chapters for YouTube description
loups -o youtube_chapters.txt my_video.mp4
# Copy the contents of youtube_chapters.txt to your video description!

🎨 Using Custom Templates

# Step 1: Create a template from a clear frame
# (Screenshot the text/overlay you want to detect)

# Step 2: Use your template
loups -t my_custom_template.png -o chapters.txt video.mp4

🔧 Troubleshooting with Logs

# Enable logging to debug detection issues
loups --log video.mp4

# Use custom log location with debug level
loups --log /path/to/debug.log --debug video.mp4

🤖 Automation & Batch Processing

# Process multiple videos quietly
loups -q -o video1_chapters.txt video1.mp4
loups -q -o video2_chapters.txt video2.mp4
loups -q -o video3_chapters.txt video3.mp4

🖼️ Creating Thumbnails for YouTube

# Extract thumbnail with chapters in one command
loups -o chapters.txt --extract-thumbnail --thumbnail-output thumbnail.jpg game_video.mp4

# Or extract thumbnail separately
loups game_video.mp4 thumbnail --thumbnail-template title_screen.png

# Batch thumbnail extraction
loups video1.mp4 thumbnail --thumbnail-output vid1_thumb.jpg
loups video2.mp4 thumbnail --thumbnail-output vid2_thumb.jpg
loups video3.mp4 thumbnail --thumbnail-output vid3_thumb.jpg

⚙️ CLI Options

Command Structure:

• Default scanning: loups [OPTIONS] VIDEO - Options must come BEFORE the video path
• Thumbnail extraction: loups VIDEO thumbnail [OPTIONS] - Thumbnail options come AFTER the subcommand

Main Command: loups [OPTIONS] VIDEO

Scan video for chapters (batter at-bats or any detected frames).

Required Arguments:

Optional Flags:

Thumbnail Command: loups VIDEO thumbnail [OPTIONS]

Extract thumbnail from video using SSIM-based template matching.

Required Arguments:

Optional Flags:

⭐ Features

🎯 Core Features

• 🥎 Animated Progress Display - Real-time scanning with fun animations
• 🔍 Template Matching - Detects specific frames using image templates
• 📝 OCR Text Extraction - Reads text from matched frames to create chapter titles
• 📺 YouTube-Ready Output - Generates properly formatted chapter timestamps
• 🖼️ Thumbnail Extraction - SSIM-based automatic thumbnail extraction
• 🎨 Universal Custom Templates - Works with ANY video content
• 🏆 Bundled Templates - Ready to use with Lights Out HB fastpitch games

🛠️ Technical Features

• 📝 Optional Logging - File logging with automatic rotation (10MB, 3 backups)
• 🔧 Debug Mode - Detailed logs for troubleshooting
• 🤫 Quiet Mode - Perfect for automation and scripting
• ⚡ Efficient Processing - Optimized video frame analysis
• 🎯 Smart OCR - Confidence-based text extraction with filtering
• 🔄 Smart Text Sorting - Left-to-right ordering of OCR results

📚 How It Works

Loups processes your video in several steps to create YouTube chapters:

1. 🔍 Template Matching - Scans video frames looking for your template image

   • The template acts as a "trigger" that identifies frames of interest
   • When a match is found, Loups knows this frame contains information to extract

2. 📝 OCR Text Extraction - On each matched frame, OCR reads the visible text

   • Extracts all text from the matched region (names, numbers, titles, etc.)
   • Applies confidence filtering to ensure accuracy
   • Sorts text elements left-to-right for proper ordering

3. ⏱️ Chapter Title & Timestamp - Combines the extracted text with video timestamp

   • Creates a chapter entry like: 0:05:23 John Smith #12
   • Each detection becomes a new YouTube chapter marker

4. 💾 YouTube Format Output - Exports chapters in YouTube-ready format

   • Copy and paste directly into your video description
   • Format: HH:MM:SS Chapter Title

Example:

0:00:00 Game Start
0:05:23 Sarah Johnson #7
0:08:45 Emma Martinez #12
0:12:30 Lily Garcia #9

🎨 Creating Custom Templates

Loups works with any video - just provide a template!

1. Find a clear frame - Pause your video where the text/overlay is visible
2. Take a screenshot - Capture the region you want to detect
3. Crop the template - Include the area where text appears
4. Use it - loups -t my_template.png video.mp4

Tips for good templates:

• ✅ Clear, high-contrast text
• ✅ Consistent position throughout video
• ✅ No motion blur or partial occlusion
• ✅ Crop tightly around the target region

Example use cases:

• 🎮 Game mode indicators or level titles
• 🎓 Speaker name overlays in lectures
• 📺 Episode titles or scene markers
• 🏆 Scoreboard player names (original use case)
• 🎵 Song title overlays in music videos
• 📰 News segment titles or chyrons

💡 Tips & Best Practices

🎯 For Best Results

• ✅ Use high-quality video recordings (720p or higher recommended)
• ✅ Ensure your template region is consistently visible throughout the video
• ✅ Steady lighting/contrast improves OCR accuracy
• ✅ Test on a short clip before processing full videos
• ✅ The text in matched frames becomes your chapter titles - ensure it's readable!

🔧 Troubleshooting

Common Issues

Python Version Errors

• Error: ModuleNotFoundError or SyntaxError during installation
• Solution: Loups requires Python 3.13+. Check your version with python --version and upgrade if needed

First Run is Slow

• Behavior: First execution takes several minutes to start
• Why: EasyOCR automatically downloads OCR models (~100MB) on first run
• Solution: This is normal! Subsequent runs will be much faster. Be patient during the initial setup.

Detection Issues

• Missed detections? Enable --log --debug to see template matches and OCR results
• Wrong text extracted? Your template might be too large or including unwanted regions
• False positives? Consider cropping your template more tightly around the identifying region
• Template not matching? Ensure the template exactly matches the video frames (size, position, quality)

OCR Issues

• Names in wrong order? OCR results are automatically sorted left-to-right
• Blank chapter titles? OCR confidence might be too low - check logs with --debug
• Garbled text? Improve video quality or use a clearer template region

Video Codec Issues

• Error: cv2.error or video won't open
• Solution: Some video formats require additional codecs. Try converting to MP4 (H.264) format

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's:

• 🐛 Bug reports
• 💡 Feature suggestions
• 📝 Documentation improvements
• 🔧 Code contributions
• 🎨 Sharing interesting use cases and templates

Please open an issue or pull request on GitHub.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

🙏 Acknowledgments

Originally created for Lights Out HB fastpitch softball coverage, now a flexible tool for any video content creator!

Made with ❤️ for content creators 🎬