Render clips past the length target instead of failing them

[nmbrthirteen]

Problem

Vertical/square clips over 45s never rendered. generate_clip raised ValueError("Clip too long...") before cutting a single frame, so the result card was stuck with a Retry button that re-ran the same check and failed forever. After a long wait, you got a dead clip and no file to download.

The actual system ceiling (180s vertical, 300s horizontal) is already enforced upstream in web-server.ts, so 45s was only ever a preference, not a real limit.

Change

• clip_generator.py: replace the hard raise with a non-blocking length_warning, attached to the result as warning. The clip renders.
• EpisodeWorkspace.jsx: render r.warning as an amber note next to the file size. Existing card logic already shows Play / Download / Retry for any successful clip.
• styles.css: add --amber token and .clip-meta .warn, following the existing --red / .err pattern.
• claude_suggest.py: the LLM prompt claimed over-45s clips "WILL FAIL rendering" (now false); corrected to say they render but get flagged. Still steers toward shorter clips.

Result

The card reads e.g. 12:47 → 13:12 · 99s · 20.1MB · 99s, over the 45s vertical target in amber, with working Play / Download / Retry.

Verification

Rendered against a synthetic source (not just typecheck):

• 70s vertical → real 1080x1920, 70.1s, 24MB file, warning present
• 30s vertical → renders, no warning key (normal path unchanged)
• tsc --noEmit clean, 61/61 vitest pass

Patch bump to 2.4.3.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features

  • Clips that exceed the target duration can now continue processing instead of stopping outright.
  • Warning messages are now shown in the clip review view when a clip is over the target length.

• Bug Fixes

  • Updated clip length handling so longer clips are flagged as “over target” rather than treated as a hard failure.

• Chores

  • Updated the app version to 2.4.3.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: a26e5fda-1f18-420c-8be1-8212052c29b0

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between a7bc212 and 851f040.

⛔ Files ignored due to path filters (1)

• package-lock.json is excluded by !**/package-lock.json

📒 Files selected for processing (5)

• backend/services/claude_suggest.py
• backend/services/clip_generator.py
• package.json
• src/ui/client/EpisodeWorkspace.jsx
• src/ui/public/css/styles.css

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Clip duration overflow is now treated as a non-fatal warning rather than a hard error. The Claude prompt wording, clip_generator's duration check, and the UI/CSS were updated to surface a "warning" field instead of failing rendering. The package version was also bumped.

Changes

Duration Warning Handling

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Backend soft-warning for over-duration clips backend/services/claude_suggest.py, backend/services/clip_generator.py	The Claude prompt now describes exceeding max duration as flagged rather than a hard failure; generate_clip sets a length_warning, prints it, and includes it in the returned out["warning"] instead of raising ValueError.
UI warning display and version bump src/ui/client/EpisodeWorkspace.jsx, src/ui/public/css/styles.css, package.json	The clip list conditionally renders a warning message when a successful result includes r.warning, styled via a new --amber token and .clip-meta .warn rule; package version bumped from 2.4.2 to 2.4.3.

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• nmbrthirteen/podcli#37: Both PRs modify clip-duration validation logic in backend/services/clip_generator.py around spec.dur_max.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly summarizes the main change: clips over the length target now render instead of failing.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch fix/clip-length-warning

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