Deeper

Overview

Deeper adds a layer on top of a piece of media. The layer is a small file with a .ccpenh.json extension, and it holds everything: the timings, the haptics, the rules. Hand that file to anyone running CCP and they get the same experience you built.

Two halves:

• The Player - loads media plus an enhancement and runs them together. Haptics, effects and rules fire as the media plays.
• The Editor - where you build it. Drop effects on a timeline, mark out regions, attach rules to triggers like gaze or blinks. Save as a portable file, or bundle it straight into the media.

What it accepts

• Local video: MP4, WEBM, MKV, MOV, AVI, M4V
• Local audio: MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, FLAC, OGG
• Remote video URLs: HypnoTube and similar embed-friendly sources

In-App Tutorial

The fastest way to learn Deeper is to let it show you. Open the Deeper Editor and hit the 🎓 button next to the title. Eight steps, about a minute, over the real UI:

Step 1 - The Editor

Preview and timeline on the left, side panel on the right. That's the whole surface.

Step 2 - Timeline

Each lane (Rules, Regions, Haptics, Effects) holds one kind of thing. R drops a region, H drops a haptic event.

Step 3 - Preview Mode

Hit Preview and feel it live. No webcam? B, M and A stand in for blink, mouth and attention-lost, and the mouse stands in for your gaze.

Step 4 - Metadata

Name, creator, description, tags. This is what someone sees in their library when they open your file.

Step 5 - Rules

A rule is one trigger and one action. Time-based rules work on anything; gaze and blink rules need video and a camera. Cooldowns stop them spamming.

Step 6 - Selected

Click anything on the timeline and its settings appear in the side panel.

Step 7 - Save & Validate

Validation runs as you type. Save with Ctrl+S; the player and library pick the change up straight away.

Step 8 - Have fun

You can reopen the tour any time from the ? button next to the title.

The Player

Pick the media, pick the enhancement, hit play. Haptics and rules fire on the timeline as it goes.

Most of the time you won't pick anything. If an enhancement file sits next to your media with the same name, it loads itself. If the media has an enhancement bundled inside it, that loads itself too. A small label tells you where the current one came from: from your library, from a sidecar file, embedded in the media, loaded by hand, or fetched from a URL.

Controls

• Play / Pause / Stop - the usual.
• Seek bar - scrub anywhere. Rules and effects work out where they stand from the new position.
• Volume - just this player. It doesn't touch the rest of CCP's audio.
• 👁 Eye Tracking - turns the webcam on for this playback so gaze, blink and "looked away" rules can fire. Same button turns it off. If the enhancement needs a camera, the player offers this to you before you start.
• ⋉ Pop out - floats the video in a small always-on-top window so it stays visible while you do something else. Click again to put it back.
• Load URL - pulls an enhancement straight from the community catalogue.
• Event log - the last few things the engine fired. The first place to look when an enhancement isn't behaving.

Three ways it plays

The Editor

Two columns. Preview and timeline on the left; metadata and the editor for whatever you clicked on the right.

Layout

• Preview (top left) - video frame, audio waveform, or embedded browser, depending on the source. This is also the surface you draw gaze rectangles on.
• Timeline (bottom left) - zoom, scrub, drag things around.
• Metadata (top right) - name, creator, remixer if you're building on someone else's work, description, tags, licence.
• Selected item (bottom right) - the settings for whichever effect, rule or region you clicked.

Timeline shortcuts

• + Effect and + Rule add an item at the playhead.
• Right-click the timeline gets you the same options in a menu.
• Shift-drag marks out a region.
• R drops a five-second region at the playhead.
• H drops a haptic event at the playhead.
• Preview plays the media inline so you can hear and feel your edits in place.

The File menu

Top left of the editor window.

File
  Save                  (Ctrl+S)
  Save As...            (Ctrl+Shift+S)
  ------------
  Export as Media...    (Ctrl+E)
  ------------
  Close

Validation before save

A strip along the bottom tells you whether the file is clean or how many problems it has. Saving and exporting stay blocked until you fix them: a rule pointing at a region that no longer exists, a malformed rule, that sort of thing. Click an error and it jumps you to the item.

Building Blocks

Three kinds of thing live on the timeline. Effects happen at a time you choose. Triggers wait for something. Actions are what happens when a trigger fires. A rule is one trigger plus one action.

Effects

Drop one at a point on the timeline. Six kinds:

Triggers

Eight things a rule can wait for:

Actions

Eight things a rule can do:

File Format & Library

The .ccpenh.json file

An enhancement is plain JSON with a .ccpenh.json extension, on schema ccp-enhancement/v1. Inside: the metadata, the regions, the haptic tracks and the rules. That's everything needed to reproduce it anywhere CCP runs.

• Readable text, so you can diff and merge it in version control.
• Capped at 1 MB, to keep things sane.
• Put one next to a media file with the same base name and it loads automatically when you open that media.

The Library

Everything in your Deeper folder shows up here as one list. Search by name, creator or tag; narrow it with the All / Video / Audio / Haptics / Webcam pills, which stack; sort by Recent, Name or Creator. Recent is how you get back to the file you were working on five minutes ago, including files that live outside your library folder.

Double-click a row to edit it. Right-click for play, reveal in folder, or delete. There's also a button through to the community Enhancements Catalogue, and a submit button if you want to share one of yours.

The bundled Welcome to Deeper demo is in there on first launch. Open it - it's a working example with regions, haptics and rules already wired up.

Export as Media

You can bundle an enhancement into a copy of an MP4, MP3 or WAV. It's in the editor under File → Export as Media... (Ctrl+E), or the button next to Save.

The file you get plays normally in any player, and CCP finds the enhancement automatically when you open it in the Deeper player. No sidecar file to remember: hand someone the media and the enhancement comes with it.

Where it hides the data

How it works

1. Validation runs first. If the editor is showing errors, export won't start. Fix them and try again.
2. Pick where to save. The exporter copies your source media and tucks the enhancement into a metadata field the format already supports.
3. It writes to a temporary file and renames it at the end, so a crash mid-export can't leave you with a broken file.
4. Your original is untouched. The new file plays fine in VLC, Windows Media Player, foobar2000 and anything else - they ignore the extra metadata.
5. Open the exported file in the Deeper player and CCP finds the enhancement on its own.

Tutorials

Two walkthroughs ship with Deeper. Both can be re-run from the 🎓 button.

Tab tour (about a minute)

Eight slides covering the player, starting a new enhancement, the library, recent files, search and filters, and Export as Media. It runs itself on first launch; close it and reopen from 🎓 whenever you want it back.

Editor walkthroughs (about three minutes each)

Guided, on-rails walkthroughs inside the editor. Three flavours, so you can pick the one closest to what you actually want to make:

• HypnoTube / TikTok - starts from a sample remote video URL and produces a finished .ccpenh.json.
• Local audio - same thing using a local audio file.
• Local video - same thing using a local video file, and it shows off the "looks away" gaze trigger.

If you'd rather poke at something than be led through it, open the bundled Welcome to Deeper demo, change a haptic pattern, save it, and play it back.

Tips & Limits

• Build gaze rules without a camera. In Preview, press B to fake a blink, M for mouth-open, A for "looks away", and use the mouse as your gaze. You can build the whole thing before you ever switch a camera on.
• Cooldowns matter. Without one, a blink trigger fires effects faster than they finish. Start around 1000-2000ms and tune from there.
• Validate before you share. The bottom strip catches rules pointing at regions that no longer exist. Clear it before exporting.
• Sidecar while building, bundled when shipping. Sidecar files save faster while you're iterating; bundle it into the media when you're done.
• Webcam triggers need a calibration. Free, and set up in the Deeper tab's Webcam Setup card. See the Webcam & Gaze Tracking guide.
• 1 MB cap. Most enhancements are a few KB. If you're anywhere near the cap you probably have duplicates - check the rule list.
• Beta means breaking changes. The file format is stable, but the editor and engine are still moving. If you're collaborating on something with a deadline, agree on a CCP version.

Settings Reference