AI Shot Duration Calculator - Akki

The AI Shot Duration Calculator is a small but genuinely useful node in the AkkiNodes pack, aimed at the video side of the "script to screen" pipeline. After the production CSV exists, this node reads it and produces shot-duration estimates - how long each shot should hold on screen - so your edit has a rhythm instead of every shot being the same length. It's the difference between a rough cut that feels like a slideshow and one that has pacing.

How it works

It's an LLM agent that analyzes the CSV with a dedicated prompt (duration_v1.txt) and returns duration estimates. The notable design choice is the sampling temperature: temperature defaults to 0.4 - the lowest in the pack, and for good reason. Duration estimation is a judgment call with a fairly narrow "right" range, and you want the model boring and consistent, not creative. This is the pack's philosophy in miniature: AI for the judgment, low randomness so the judgment is stable.

Inputs and outputs

Required: llm_model, csv_report (the production CSV), and shot_index - a 1-based index for the shot you care about. If you just want the whole list, the other outputs handle that. prompt_selector picks the prompt file, max_tokens defaults to 2048.

Outputs:

• durations_text_report - the full human-readable report of all shots and their estimated durations. This is the thing you'd glance at while editing.
• shot_names_LIST and durations_LIST - parallel lists for all shots, so you can drive a loop or a video node with per-shot durations.
• SEL_duration - the duration for the specific shot_index you asked about. Grab this for the "current shot" in a per-shot render loop.
• full_llm_process_log - the raw reasoning, for when an estimate looks off.

Where it fits and how to install

The CSV it reads is the canonical production shot list from Phase 2, so this node slots in after the Cinematographer/QC/parser chain and before you start rendering video prompts.

Pack install is the same as every node here:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/routhakash/AkkiNodes-LLM-Suite-for-ComfyUI

Or search "AkkiNodes LLM Suite" in ComfyUI Manager, run install.bat as admin on Windows, put a GGUF in ComfyUI/models/llms/, restart.

Honest caveat: these are estimates, not divine truth. The model is guessing pacing from a CSV that doesn't encode the film's vibe, so treat the durations as starting points for your edit, especially for dialogue-heavy scenes where the model tends to under-estimate. And if it's estimating wildly, remember the quality cap - a weak GGUF reads a CSV about as well as you'd expect.