DirectorsConsole

<p align="center"> <h1 align="center">🎬 Director's Console</h1> <p align="center"> <strong>A unified AI VFX production pipeline for cinematographically accurate image and video generation</strong> </p> <p align="center"> <em>Project Eliot</em> </p> </p>

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Director's Console combines a Cinema Prompt Engineering (CPE) rules engine, a Storyboard Canvas for visual production planning, a Gallery for browsing, organizing, and managing all project media, and an Orchestrator for distributed rendering across multiple ComfyUI nodes. Every prompt it generates is grounded in real-world cinematography — real cameras, real lenses, real film stocks, real lighting equipment — ensuring that only what is physically and historically possible can be configured.

Table of Contents

• Key Features
• Screenshots
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Storyboard Canvas
  • Canvas Overview
  • Panels
  • Image Viewer & Compare
  • Project Management
  • Printing
• Gallery
  • File Browser & Media Viewer
  • Batch Operations
  • Ratings, Tags & Search
  • Storyboard Integration
• ComfyUI Integration
  • Node Manager
  • Workflows
  • Multi-Node Rendering
• Cinema Prompt Engineering (CPE)
  • How It Works
  • The Rules Engine
  • Live-Action Film Presets
  • Animation Presets
  • AI-Enhanced Prompts
• AI LLM Provider Setup
  • API Key Providers
  • OAuth Providers
  • Local LLM Providers
• Technical Reference
  • Cameras
  • Lenses
  • Film Stocks
  • Lighting
  • Camera Movement
  • Shot Sizes & Composition
• Architecture
• Development
• License

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Key Features

• Cinematographic Accuracy — Every configuration is validated against real-world constraints. You cannot pair a Panavision lens with a non-Panavision camera. You cannot use LED lighting in a 1960s film. You cannot handheld an IMAX camera. The rules engine enforces what is physically possible.

• 67 Live-Action Film Presets — From Metropolis (1927) to Parasite (2019), each preset loads the actual camera, lens, film stock, lighting, and aspect ratio used in that production.

• 43 Animation Presets — Studio Ghibli, Akira, Spider-Verse, Pixar, Arcane, and more. Each with accurate style domain, rendering pipeline, motion characteristics, and visual grammar.

• Storyboard Canvas — Free-floating infinite canvas with draggable, resizable panels. Per-panel workflows, image history with navigation, star ratings, markdown notes, and multi-select alignment tools.

• Gallery Tab — Full-featured media browser for all project files. Folder tree navigation, grid/masonry/list/timeline views, batch rename with regex and templates, drag-and-drop file moves, trash with restore, ratings, color tags, PNG metadata search, duplicate detection, and direct integration with Storyboard (send reference images, restore workflow parameters from metadata).

• Recent Projects — Quick access to your last 10 projects from the main menu. Hover to see project path and last-opened time. Individual entries can be removed.

• Video Generation Support — Full pipeline support for AI video workflows (Wan 2.2, CogVideoX, HunyuanVideo, etc.). Videos are detected from ComfyUI outputs (images, gifs, videos keys), saved with correct extensions, displayed inline with <video> playback, and persisted across project save/reload.

• Multi-Node ComfyUI Rendering — Connect multiple ComfyUI backends and render in parallel. Real-time progress via WebSocket with per-node stage tracking. Node metrics, health monitoring, and one-click restart.

• Generation Progress Sidebar — Dedicated sidebar panel showing detailed progress for all active generations. Per-node workflow stage display (e.g., "Loading Checkpoint", "KSampler", "VAE Decode"), multi-phase progress for multi-KSampler workflows, and step counters. Replaces intrusive panel overlays with a minimal bottom bar indicator.

• AI-Enhanced Prompts — Connect 13+ LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI, Ollama, and more) to refine and enhance your cinema prompts with AI assistance.

• Model-Specific Output — Prompts are automatically formatted for your target model: Midjourney, FLUX, Stable Diffusion XL, Wan 2.2, Runway Gen-3, CogVideoX, HunyuanVideo, and more.

• Print Storyboards — Export your storyboard to print with configurable layouts (1–4 panels per row), page sizes, orientation, and optional panel notes.

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Screenshots

Storyboard Canvas — First Launch

Storyboard Canvas — Active Project

Project Settings

Panel Ratings, Notes & Node Selection

Image Viewer

Image Compare

Node Manager

Node Metrics & Selection

Load Project View

CPE — Live-Action Film Presets

CPE — Film Information & Technical Details

CPE — Animation Presets

CPE — LLM Provider Configuration

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Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+ (with pip or uv)
• Node.js 18+ (with npm)
• ComfyUI — At least one running instance for image generation
• Git (for cloning)

Setup

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/NickPittas/DirectorsConsole.git
cd DirectorsConsole

# Run the automated setup
python start.py --setup

The --setup flag will:

1. Create isolated Python virtual environments for both the CPE backend and the Orchestrator
2. Install all Python dependencies (FastAPI, Pydantic, httpx, loguru, Pillow, cryptography, etc.)
3. Install frontend npm packages
4. Verify all imports are working
5. Report the status of each component

Manual Setup (if needed)

CPE Backend:

cd CinemaPromptEngineering
python -m venv venv
# Windows
venv\Scripts\activate
# macOS/Linux
source venv/bin/activate

pip install -r requirements.txt

Frontend:

cd CinemaPromptEngineering/frontend
npm install

Orchestrator:

cd Orchestrator
python -m venv .venv
# Windows
.venv\Scripts\activate
# macOS/Linux
source .venv/bin/activate

pip install -r requirements.txt

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Quick Start

# Start all services (backend, frontend, orchestrator)
python start.py

This launches:

| Service | URL | Description | |---------|-----|-------------| | CPE Backend | http://localhost:9800 | Cinema Prompt Engineering API | | Storyboard Frontend | http://localhost:5173 | React UI (opens in browser) | | Orchestrator | http://localhost:9820 | Render farm manager |

Optional Flags

python start.py --no-orchestrator   # Skip Orchestrator
python start.py --no-frontend       # Skip Frontend (API only)
python start.py --no-browser        # Don't auto-open browser
python start.py --setup             # Verify environment only

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Storyboard Canvas

Canvas Overview

The Storyboard Canvas is a free-floating infinite workspace for planning and executing AI-generated visual productions. Panels can be freely positioned, resized, and organized on the canvas with zoom and pan controls.

Canvas Controls:

• Zoom: Mouse wheel (zooms from pointer position)
• Pan: Click and drag on empty canvas area
• Multi-Select: Ctrl+Click individual panels, or marquee-select by dragging
• Alignment: Snap guides appear when holding Shift; alignment toolbar for selected panels
• Keyboard Shortcuts: Ctrl+P (Print), Ctrl+S (Save), and more

Panels

Each panel is an independent production unit with its own:

• Workflow — Select any imported ComfyUI workflow per panel
• Parameters — Each panel stores its own parameter values (prompt, steps, CFG, sampler, etc.)
• Image & Video History — Navigate through all generated images and videos with forward/back arrows. Videos play inline with native <video> controls.
• Star Rating — Rate images 1–5 stars for quick review
• Markdown Notes — Attach production notes with edit/view toggle
• Panel Name — Custom names that map to folder structure (e.g., "Hero_Shot" creates {project}/Hero_Shot/)
• Node Selection — Choose which ComfyUI backend renders this panel

Image Viewer & Compare

Image Viewer — Full-resolution image vi