Introducing Podcast Studio

At 5AM, our goal has always been to build a unified hub for creative expression. We started with photo storage, moved into AI-assisted image generation, and brought it all to your terminal with the 5am CLI.

Today, we're expanding into sound and video with the release of Podcast Studio—a self-contained tool that turns text, web pages, Hacker News threads, RSS feeds, or user-uploaded media into a fully produced, multi-voice "radio talk show" podcast. And when you're ready to share your show on platforms that demand video, you can wrap it with an animated waveform overlay—and timestamp-synced burned-in captions—using the companion 5am CLI.

The feature is live right now: visit the web app at /podcast or update your CLI to get started.

Direct in the Browser, Powered by Your Gemini Key

Most podcast generation tools run heavy processing pipelines on the server, which introduces high latency and expensive subscription gates. We built Podcast Studio differently: everything runs client-side in your browser.

Your script generation, text-to-speech synthesis (TTS), and audio transcription hit Google's API directly using your own Gemini API key. Our backend never proxies your API key, never sees your audio segments, and never bills you for generation. For anonymous guests, your key is requested lazily only when you click generate; logged-in users can save their key securely to their profile.

By keeping the heavy lifting local to the browser, we've enabled a level of customization and interactivity that server-bound apps cannot match.

How It Works: The Web Experience

When you visit /podcast, you’ll step into a dark-themed virtual recording studio designed to handle everything from intake to final export.

1. The Intake Board

Choose from five distinct modes to seed your episode:

• Text & Files: Paste a text draft or script.
• URL & RSS Feeds: Provide any website link or podcast feed. (Our server assists behind the scenes with a secure, CORS-compliant fetch to keep your browser safe).
• Hacker News: Browse and pull top stories directly into your feed.
• Media Upload: Upload a local audio/video file; Gemini will transcribe it on the fly to use as the source material.

Before generating, you can customize your Cast. Add anywhere from 2 to 8 speakers (a host and up to 7 callers), assign them custom names, write character descriptions to guide their talking points, and select their voices from 30 prebuilt Gemini TTS voices (such as Zephyr · Bright or Charon · Informative).

2. Intelligent Scripts & Vocal Performance

When you hit "Generate", gemini analyzes your intake material and generates a radio script in a structured JSON schema mapping back to your custom cast names.

We feed this script to gemini-text-to-speach in the browser, segment by segment. To make the dialogue sound authentic, the script generator injects inline performance cues like [laughs], [sighs], or [whispers]. The TTS model acts on these instructions to generate natural pauses and emotional vocal inflection, rather than reading them aloud.

3. The Studio Dashboard

Once your episode is ready, the interface transitions to the Studio View:

• Tape Deck: A retro animated cassette tape that spins during playback, bordered by a glowing circular progress ring.
• Teleprompter: A scrolling script highlighting each spoken line in real time. Want to change what a speaker said? Click the edit pencil on any segment, rewrite their line, and press Ctrl/Cmd + Enter. The studio immediately invalidates the cache for that segment and synthesizes a new audio clip on the fly. You can also click any segment to jump playback directly to that line.
• On-Demand Cover Art: Click to generate custom 1:1 square album art using gemini-image-generation based on your episode's title and summary. The artwork displays on the cassette reels and is ready to download.

When you're happy with the edit, click Download WAV to compile all segments locally into a single audio file, or Save to Album (for logged-in creators) to add the WAV directly to your 5AM media library.

4. Timestamp-Synced Transcripts

Alongside the WAV, the Export panel lets you download a transcript in three formats—.vtt, .srt, or .json. These aren't rough approximations: the timestamps are derived from the exact byte position of each segment in the compiled audio (24 kHz mono PCM, so every 48,000 bytes equals one second), which makes them sample-accurate against the WAV you just downloaded.

That precision is what makes the next step possible. The .srt/.vtt files drop straight into the CLI as burned-in captions, and the .json—a structured list of { speaker, text, startMs, endMs } cues—is perfect for programmatic workflows like timing AI-generated b-roll scenes to the dialogue.

From Audio to Video: The CLI Integration

Audio files are perfect for RSS feeds, but platforms like YouTube, Instagram, X (Twitter), and TikTok require video.

To bridge this gap, the 5am CLI includes the media visualize command. It takes your downloaded WAV file and cover art and turns them into a high-definition H.264 MP4 video featuring a dynamic, animated audio waveform.

Quick Example

If you have downloaded episode.wav and your generated cover art cover.png from the Podcast Studio, run the following command in your terminal:

5am media visualize episode.wav \
  --cover cover.png \
  --output episode.mp4

This renders a 16:9 widescreen video with your cover art letterboxed on a clean slate-950 canvas and a Winamp-style scrolling waveform across the bottom quarter.

Burn In Your Transcript as Captions

Remember the transcript you downloaded from the Studio? Pass it with --subtitles and the CLI burns it in as captions, positioned just above the waveform strip:

5am media visualize episode.wav \
  --cover cover.png \
  --subtitles episode.srt \
  --output episode.mp4

Because the transcript timestamps are sample-accurate against the WAV, the captions stay perfectly in sync with the audio—no manual nudging. The CLI accepts both .srt and .vtt; styling and positioning are handled for you, legible white-on-translucent text on the dark canvas.

Advanced Visualizer Controls

The CLI visualizer is highly configurable depending on your target platform:

• Aspect Ratios (--aspect):
  • 16:9 (default) for YouTube
  • 1:1 for Instagram and grid feeds
  • 9:16 for vertical videos (TikTok, Shorts, Reels)
• Visualization Styles (--style):
  • showwaves (default): Classic oscilloscope lines
  • showfreqs: Frequency spectrum bars
  • showcqt: Constant-Q transform color band
  • showspectrum: Waterfall spectrogram display

To generate a vertical video with frequency bars and burned-in captions for TikTok, you can run:

5am media visualize episode.wav \
  --cover cover.png \
  --subtitles episode.srt \
  --aspect 9:16 \
  --style showfreqs \
  --output tiktok-reels.mp4

Note: The CLI visualizer requires a local installation of ffmpeg. If you run the command without authenticating (5am login), your video will include a small "Powered by 5AM" watermark in the bottom-left corner.

Going Further: AI B-Roll in One Command

Want more than a waveform? The repo ships a one-shot wrapper, scripts/podcast_to_video.py (stdlib-only Python, runs anywhere), that automates the whole pipeline. In its default mode it measures your audio, generates enough short Veo b-roll clips to cover it, stitches them together, lays your podcast audio on top, and—with --subtitles—burns in your transcript. Give it your transcript and it even has Gemini write per-scene prompts so the visuals track the conversation:

# AI-generated b-roll behind your episode, with captions
python3 scripts/podcast_to_video.py -i episode.wav -s episode.srt -a 9:16

Prefer the waveform look without writing the media visualize flags yourself? The same script does that too with --visualize --cover cover.jpg. One script, both paths.

Ready to Broadcast?

Whether you're looking to summarize long documents into conversational audio, turn blog posts into podcasts, or share your terminal commands as animated talk shows, Podcast Studio makes the process seamless.

1. Head over to /podcast to record your first show.
2. Enter your Gemini API key (or save it to your profile).
3. Tune the cast, edit the script, and download the master WAV plus a .srt/.vtt transcript.
4. Run 5am media visualize --subtitles episode.srt to render a captioned video for social media.

We can't wait to hear what you create. If you have feedback on voice quality, custom scripts, or CLI options, reach out to us!

Try Podcast Studio → or Get the 5am CLI →