This is an open specification and toolchain for cue‑based playback overlays on video content. It defines a lightweight format for skip, mute, and adjust events, enabling developers to build lawful, resilient playback enhancements protected under the Family Movie Act of 2005
Families have always improvised ways to manage what they watch together. Parents fast‑forward scenes, cover ears, or pause mid‑moment to protect their children. Studios gave us captions and parental controls, but never the deeper choice families have asked for. When companies tried to offer lawful filtering, they were met with lawsuits and shutdowns. Families were left powerless.
Think of overlays as a new layer of glass placed over a window. The view outside remains the same, but families can tint, shade, or adjust the light to suit their needs. The underlying film is untouched; the experience is simply filtered through a lawful, personal lens.
- Families already expect personalization: captions, skip‑intro buttons, playback speed. Overlays are the natural next step.
- Proprietary services remain vulnerable to hostile litigation and licensing pressures.
- Open source ensures resilience: no single company can be targeted or controlled.
- The Family Movie Act already protects personal playback filtering — the foundation is in place.
Families lack meaningful, lawful control over playback. Current options are subscription‑based, lawsuit‑prone, and shaped by external industry pressures. When those services disappear, families lose their freedom overnight.
Cue‑based overlays: lightweight, user‑directed enhancements that sit on top of playback. They mute, skip, or visually adjust scenes without altering the underlying file. Ephemeral, additive, and lawful — overlays empower families without piracy or DRM circumvention.
Families and developers will need simple, lawful tools to generate their own cue files. These tools are not distributed here, but the community can build them openly:
- Cue Editors: Apps where users mark start/stop times for muting or skipping.
- Log Generators: Tools that record playback events into a text file the overlay player can read.
- GUI Builders: Drag‑and‑drop interfaces for families to customize filters without coding.
- Community Templates: Shared lawful examples (e.g., “skip jump scares,” “mute coarse language”) that users can adapt.
By keeping cue creation in the hands of families, overlays remain lawful, personal, and resilient.
- Empowerment: Families choose how they watch.
- Resilience: Open source ensures continuity beyond lawsuits or licensing deals.
- Lawfulness: Anchored in the Family Movie Act — no fixed copies, no infringement.
- Accessibility: Tools should be simple, cross‑platform, and open.
- No piracy.
- No DRM circumvention.
- No distribution of copyrighted works.
- This project is about lawful personal use only.
This repo begins as a vision. Developers, designers, and families are invited to collaborate, fork, and build. Together we can normalize overlays as a standard playback feature — resilient, lawful, and family‑owned.