paper-highlighter

Sapana Micro Software

Turn any PDF into a narrated broadcast

PDF → narrated video with synchronized neon highlighting

paper-highlighter · preview

Abstract — We present paper-highlighter, a system that

converts PDF documents into narrated video with synchronized

neon highlighting and news-style camera motion.

Performance centers on unique-frame deduplication…

REC · word sync · camera on

What it delivers

Broadcast-style document video—narration, spatial highlighting, and camera motion—without a manual edit suite.

Word sync

One active neon highlight tracks the spoken word in real time.

News-style camera

Smooth pan-and-zoom close-ups keep the reader’s eye on the text.

Seconds, not minutes

Unique-frame deduplication renders once per cue, not once per frame.

Pipeline at a glance

Conceptual flow from the technical paper—no implementation details on this site.

1

Text index

PDFKit extraction with Vision OCR fallback for scanned pages.

2

Timed speech

Word-boundary cues aligned to synthesized narration audio.

3

Timeline plan

Speech cues become highlight segments on each page.

4

Render & encode

Neon overlays, optional pan-and-zoom camera, H.264 + AAC mux.

Headline results

Unique frames vs total

0 / 129

Smoke PDF deduplication

Full paper at 1080p

0s

~6.4 min of narration

Automated tests

0

Timing, mapping, camera

Max camera zoom

0×

Word-mode close-up

DocumentResolutionAudioFramesWall time
1-page smoke PDF640×360~4 s129~2 s
1-page smoke PDF1920×1080~4 s129~2 s
Academic paper (CSN)1920×1080~6.4 min~11,458~36 s

From the abstract

paper-highlighter converts PDF documents into narrated high-definition video with synchronized neon highlighting and optional news-agency-style camera motion. The pipeline indexes text, exports sample-accurate speech cues, maps highlights to page coordinates, and encodes broadcast-ready MP4—all on macOS using system frameworks. Unique-frame deduplication reduces compositing from every timeline frame to one render per visual state, yielding sub-minute conversion for long documents.

Full paper (PDF) →