Pro guide · from the Reel
Make long bedtime-story videos for YouTube with Claude Code and Papermotion
To make a long bedtime-story video, make short stories one at a time with Claude Code and Papermotion, voice them with an ElevenLabs narrator, then join them into one video with a chapter per story. Our demo has three stories and runs 2:31. An hour is 67 stories; we haven't made a full hour. Each story took a Claude session of 50 to 60 minutes, renders included, so 67 stories made one after another would be 56 to 67 hours. Running two at a time, as we did, the renders alone would fill about 17 hours of clock time. On top of that comes your own time to watch each story and ask for changes.
- 1080p, 2:31 demo
- 3 stories, 3 chapters
- Runs on your computer
Published · Updated
See what you getGet everything for $12.
One payment opens the whole guide and the kit. No subscription. Price as of October 2026; free for the first 150 readers.
- The Papermotion project with our three finished stories (Dot and Owl, Little Boat, Bramble's Warm Bed), ready to render
- A Claude skill (SKILL.md): type /next-story and an idea, and Claude makes the next chapter
- voice.py: the ElevenLabs narrator, two takes per line, keeps the take Whisper hears word for word and that fits its beat
- finish.py: title card, narrator over the music, the same loudness for every story
- join.py: joins stories into one video at -16 LUFS and writes the YouTube chapter list and subtitles
- check.py: Whisper listens to the finished video and lists any word that differs from the script
- The prompts we typed, and how to write your own
- YouTube checklist: titles, made for kids, chapters, subtitles, AI disclosure
- README with every step and LICENSES.md
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Claude Code wrote the two new stories and their animation from one-line prompts. Joining the three took 10 seconds. Apart from our existing Claude plan and server, the only extra cost is an ElevenLabs plan for the narrator. Publishing needs a paid one; the cheapest, Starter, is $6 a month for 30,000 credits. Two takes of every line in the three stories used 3,970 of them. No image or video model, no stock music. Each story does use part of the Claude plan's usage, and the server's running cost isn't counted. The kit with the tools and the three stories is $12 at launch ($29 regular).
The chapter list our join tool wrote for the YouTube description:
0:00 Dot and Owl
0:43 Little Boat
1:37 Bramble's Warm Bed
On our server one second of film took 26 to 62 seconds to render (the maths is in step 7). We tested the join tool once at 1:00:12, by joining 86 copies of the same chapter. That shows it can make an hour-long file; we did not test an hour of different stories.
How people make these, and what we changed
Many long bedtime videos on YouTube are compilations: several stories in one upload with a timestamp per story. A "6HRS Bedtime History Stories" video joins 9 stories, and 3-hour and 4-hour sleep-story compilations list one timestamp per story in the description. The AI pipelines people share go story, then scenes, then voice, then assembly. An n8n template has Claude write and split the story, then pays four services for images, clips, voice and editing. We kept the same order and the same voice service, and replaced the other paid steps with free tools that run on our computer.
The pictures come from Papermotion (MIT), an engine where every character and set is drawn by code as torn paper, and Claude writes that code. The narrator is an ElevenLabs voice on Eleven v4, and Whisper, running on our computer, checks every line it reads.
What is in the kit
- The Papermotion project with our three stories, each with its beats, narration lines and soundtrack code.
- A Claude skill,
/next-story: give it an idea and Claude makes a finished chapter, from the story text to the rendered film with its narrator. - Four small Python tools:
voice.py(the ElevenLabs narrator, two takes per line),finish.py(title card and mix),join.py(one long video at -16 LUFS, chapter list, subtitles) andcheck.py(Whisper listens to the finished video and compares it with the scripts). - The prompts we typed, a YouTube upload checklist, a README and the licence of every part.
What you need
- Claude Code on a paid Claude plan. We used Claude Code 2.1.312 with Claude Opus 5.5.
- FFmpeg. We had 6.1.1.
- Python 3.10 or newer. We had 3.12.3.
- An ElevenLabs account and API key. The free plan (10,000 credits a month) is fine for tests, but ElevenLabs' terms of use (updated 9 October 2026) allow free accounts non-commercial use only. A monetized channel needs a paid plan: on 31 October 2026 the pricing page listed "Commercial License" from Starter ($6 a month, 30,000 credits) up. Text to speech costs 1 credit per character.
- About 1.4 GB of disk for the tools and models (on ours: Python packages 500 MB, Whisper 464 MB, Chromium 273 to 403 MB, Node packages 85 MB), plus about 50 MB per finished story (4.2 GB per hour of video).
Everything ran on a Linux server with 8 CPU cores, 15 GB of RAM and no graphics card. The commands below are for Linux; we didn't test them on macOS or Windows.
The steps
Step 1: Set up the project
Every command from here on runs inside the kit, so you need it first: the download link is in the unlock box on this page. Unzip it and run this in the bedtime-stories folder:
pnpm install
npx playwright-core install chromium
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r bedtime/requirements.txt
pnpm typecheck && pnpm test
Chromium was already on our server, so we didn't need the playwright-core install line; it is the one from Papermotion's README.
Make an API key in ElevenLabs (Developers, then API keys) and put it in the terminal you will work in. Keep it out of every file in the project:
export ELEVENLABS_API_KEY="paste-your-key-here"
Our narrator is "Bedtime UK Beth" from the ElevenLabs Voice Library. Open her page in the Voice Library and add her to your voices before the first run.
Step 2: Record the narrator first
In the pro guide
Step 3: Render the films
In the pro guide
Step 4: Finish each story as a chapter
In the pro guide
Step 5: Make a new story with one line
In the pro guide
Step 6: Join the stories with chapters
In the pro guide
Step 7: What an hour would take
In the pro guide
Step 8: Upload to YouTube
In the pro guide
Questions people ask
Can I make a full 1-hour video this way?
Yes, but we only tested the joining step at a full hour; our finished demo is 2 minutes 31 seconds. With chapters like our two new ones (54 seconds each, 48 of them film) an hour is 67 stories, and rendering is the slow part. On our 8-core server with no graphics card one second of film took 26 to 62 seconds to render, so an hour would take about 17 hours of rendering with two renders at a time, plus drafts. Counting Claude's work around the renders, each story was a 50 to 60 minute session, and each needs a person to watch it. The join step is quick: our one-hour test join took 4 minutes 12 seconds.
Can I use the narrator voice on a monetized channel?
Yes, if you make the narration while you're on a paid ElevenLabs plan. ElevenLabs' terms of use (updated 9 October 2026) allow free accounts non-commercial use only, and on 31 October 2026 the pricing page listed "Commercial License" from the Starter plan ($6 a month, 30,000 credits) up, so keep the free plan (10,000 credits a month) for tests. Our three stories used 3,970 credits with two takes of every line.
Should I answer Yes to YouTube's AI use question?
We would answer Yes, because the narrator is a synthetic voice that sounds like a real person. YouTube says a Yes can show a label, for example in the expanded description and, per the same page, does not limit the audience or the video's eligibility to earn money.
Should I set the video as made for kids?
For these stories, yes: they are written for children aged 3 to 6, and YouTube lists stories for children and animated characters as signs of made-for-kids content. That setting turns off comments, personalised ads, end screens and the miniplayer.
Do I need a graphics card?
No. Everything in this guide ran on a server with an 8-core CPU and no GPU: the renders and the Whisper check. The voice is made on ElevenLabs' servers.
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