Camera movement
with a contract.

Every move has one entry, travel, and settle phase. Enabled phases total 100 percent; a disabled phase has a zero percent duration. Use the explicit Normalize phases action when you want the shares adjusted—MotionPath never changes them silently.

Each phase has an easing profile. The timing view uses the same normalized phase progress as the schematic preview, so the shared playhead does not change the stored Motion DNA.

Each framing mode owns a deterministic cone direction, and authored yaw and pitch remain deliberate offsets on that direction.

Top, side, and timing views show normalized coordinates while preserving requested meters, degrees, and seconds in labels. They explain requested path, orientation, height, phase boundaries, and speed; they do not guarantee lens physics, real-world rig constraints, scene collision, or a generated model result.

Playback, scrubbing, and stepping only move the preview playhead. They never mutate Motion DNA or mark a local draft dirty.

The canonical instruction is always model-neutral. Selecting a checked-in model profile may reorder language, use its preferred vocabulary, and display support warnings. MotionPath distinguishes what the DNA requests, what the translation expresses, and what is unconfirmed. It never promises a guaranteed or exact result.

Your active draft is saved to this browser about 300 milliseconds after the latest valid edit. Invalid edits remain in memory without replacing the last valid local copy. If browser storage is unavailable or full, MotionPath keeps the in-memory draft and reports a warning so you can export JSON. A corrupt saved record is quarantined in place rather than deleted or merged into defaults, and ordinary edits cannot overwrite those stored bytes. Replacing it with a valid import or permanently removing it with Reset requires explicit confirmation; Reset clears only the MotionPath draft key. That is the local draft.

Portable files use a sanitized .motionpath.json filename and the frozen motionpath.motion-dna/v1 schema. Top-level version: 1 identifies that schema format; it is not a draft revision, and unknown schema versions are rejected. The separate lineage.localRevision is an integer from 1 through 2,147,483,647. An otherwise-valid legacy v1 file may omit only that revision: MotionPath normalizes the omission to 1 before validation. A present invalid revision is never repaired, and every newly persisted or exported document includes the field. That local revision is not the schema version.

Import reads only the file you explicitly select and is limited to 256 KiB. MotionPath checks the file type, size, JSON syntax, unsafe keys, schema format, and complete normalized record before replacing the current draft. A successful import creates a fresh local ID with source: imported, uses the imported Motion DNA ID as parentId, increments its local revision, and carries any Vault record ID forward. Local recovery preserves the stored identity, parent, revision, timestamps, and Vault lineage. Any failure leaves the current draft unchanged. Export and import work without Vault or a network connection. JSON stays local.

Save to Vault is optional. It opens DVP Vault same-origin (or local file:), waits for ready, and posts a correlated dvp-save-motion message. The default action is Save as new version. Update existing appears only for a valid Vault-linked draft and asks you to confirm the Vault record name before overwriting that library entry in place. Open from Vault launches pick-motion mode; the selected library record is never assigned directly to the draft. MotionPath normalizes the Motion DNA (filling only a legacy omitted lineage.localRevision to 1), validates it, associates lineage.vaultRecordId with the selected Vault library id, validates again, then derives a fresh local draft with source: vault, a new local id, parentId set to the picked Motion DNA id, lineage.localRevision incremented by one, and the Vault record id preserved. Top-level version stays the schema-format value 1. Popup blocked, timeout, close, or rejection leave the draft untouched and point you to Export JSON. Motion DNA never rides in the URL or analytics—only mode, target, source, and a bounded correlation id.

Send to CinePrompt, Send to FrameDNA, and Send to Script to Shots stage a single-use sessionStorage envelope (dvp.motionpath.handoff/v1) that holds the canonical instruction, optional model instruction, compact Motion DNA, and lineage. The browser then opens the tool with only ?source=motionpath—Motion DNA never rides in the URL, query fragment, or analytics. Each envelope expires after ten minutes, is size-bounded to 256 KiB, carries a one-time nonce, and is removed on first successful consume. If handoff storage is unavailable or the write fails, you stay in MotionPath and can Copy or Export JSON. Same-origin HTTP is the supported cross-page handoff path; Chromium file: origins do not share sessionStorage across pages, so local file: opens will not deliver the envelope. Receiver pages apply only their camera-motion surface when their integration is active; local authoring, recovery, import, export, and optional Vault save/open never depend on those receivers.

MotionPath version one is control-driven and preset-first. It supports one primary subject and one optional look-at target. It accepts no image, audio, or video media uploads, and it requires no account, API key, backend, or network request for core authoring, preview, local draft recovery, checked-in translation, or JSON export.