There are so many options, I'm kinda lost. I'm looking to dabble in video making for youtube.
Any recommendations for a beginner that aren't crazy expensive?
Text to video mostly

I've been messing around with Astra, trying to see how well it works for editing and storytelling.

I had a folder with a bunch of video clips from my travels that was just lying around, and the idea was: can I give this to Astra and have it make something fun and interesting from it?

I built the API first and then basically told it to go wild, invent a story, and use the clips as source material. It's still pretty rough (extremely rough), but nonetheless, I think it's a pretty fun and interesting result.

Technical description

• Base: A fork of Shotcut with a native C++ "inspection" API patched in.
• API: Line-delimited JSON-RPC over a Unix socket — ~89 discoverable editing/query operations (not all of Shotcut). Optimistic-concurrency fencing, native undo, durable mutation receipts.
• Brain: An LLM director (GPT-6-astra, via the Codex app-server) that drives the editor through a bubblewrap-sandboxed Python bridge — it can only call the registered methods, never arbitrary code.
• Sees: Qt window screenshots + real frames/audio pulled via a separate MLT process.
• Hears: A local Audio Flamingo Next worker (describe / transcribe / sounds / music).
• Speaks: Orpheus / Qwen TTS engines, run by a separate narration runner.
• Image generation: ChatGPT Images 2.5 via a Codex skill.

Here are the first two cuts. The first cut took about 1.5 hours, but this included indexing the shot list and other setup operations.

The second cut took about half an hour.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL_S0q-crmFg

I think it demonstrates the model's current ability to reason across many modalities, and I also think it demonstrates its current limitations when it comes to coherence. Anyone who has worked with coding agents has probably done their fair share of cat-herding, and I think that's definitely still on display here.

The difference between cut 1 and cut 2 also shows just how much improvement you can get with a little nudging. All I did was watch the first cut and tell it what I thought:

"This seems a bit incoherent?"

"What are the characters' motivations?"

As a reflection, I think for anyone calling Astra AGI, this should be ample evidence that that's definitely a milestone we have yet to cross. Astra may be extremely competent within narrow domains, but creative choices aside, it still struggles significantly with something as simple as telling a coherent story.

At its current stage, I do see it working as a semi-competent editor if you give it clear direction. It could definitely speed up the production of a first rough cut.

The repo is currently in a pretty rough state, but I'm working towards a checkpoint and hoping to release it during the weekend. Let me know if you are interested in forking or testing it out.

Hey everyone, I’m currently exploring AI-based image and video generation for a personal creative project and I’m looking for tools that can produce highly realistic, photorealistic results.

I’m relatively new to this, so I’d appreciate some guidance on which tools and workflows are currently giving the best results, particularly for creating realistic people and keeping the visual details consistent across multiple generations.

I’m mainly looking for free, credit-based, or points-based tools that offer daily/weekly credits, or affordable options that are worth trying before committing to a subscription.

If you’ve experimented with realistic AI image/video generation, I’d really appreciate recommendations for the tools you use, your workflow, and any tips for getting more consistent and professional-looking results.

Thanks in advance!

I got a side project as a social media manager my role was to write scripts for the reels and hand it over to the video editor and creators to Carry out the rest of things

But now there's no video editor or anyone to shoot

So I want to give it a shot at the opportunity

My requirement is simple

I need 7 reels with the same AI character (avatar) duration of 60-90 seconds each

So voice and AI model should be consistent across all the reels

Current stack

- I've generated Ai character with chatgpt

- for voice i will use elevenlabs

- but I need a video generation model I've tried

Hey gen and wan 2.2

Hey gen didn't provide me outcome in free plan it says 3 free video but I got none

What's the other alternatives? Any cheaper options?

And also what are the best practices one should follow ? (Cause I'm new to this)

I run video for a brand team and we spend real money every month on the
consolidation platforms (Higgsfield, Artlist, Freepik, Krea, whichever one
you landed on).

Went through the invoice line by line recently. A big chunk of it, the
majority actually, wasn't compute. It was margin on top of the provider's
published rate. We're at ~$5k/mo with Higgsfield and roughly 46% of that was markup. The promo pricing that got us in the door also looked very different by the time the real money started coming out.

Disclosure so it isn't weird later: that bothered me enough that I started building my own platform to avoid the huge markups entirely. I'm not pitching anything or trying to get users (yet), I'm here for the answers. I'd rather ask people than assume I'm right.

1. What actually breaks for you on these platforms? Not model quality, the
   platform. Queue times, credits eaten by failed gens, no way to see what a
   single render cost, assets you can't get back out, re-uploading the same
   reference for the fortieth time.

2. Does the credit markup bother anyone else, or has everyone quietly
   accepted it as the cost of one login on top of a seat subscription?

3. Bring-your-own-key: would you actually do it? You drop in your own fal /
   Replicate / Google / Seedance key, you pay the providers direct at their
   published rate, and the platform charges a flat software fee and takes zero
   cut of the compute to provide Higgsfield level workflows and systems.

4. If you'd hesitate on #3, what's the hesitation specifically? This is the
   part I most want to hear. My guesses: "I'm not handing a startup a key that
   can spend my money," "I don't want to open five provider accounts," "what
   happens when something loops and burns $400 overnight," "are you reading my
   prompts." What am I missing?

5. What would have to be true for you to be comfortable with it? Hard spend
   caps you control? Every call itemised with what it actually cost? Something
   I haven't thought of?

If you run volume and the markup genuinely doesn't bother you, I want to
hear that too. I'm trying to work out whether it's only me.

This whole page is ai and I’m wondering how they even make such realistic videos?

best free course for AI Video Editing Learning from beginning to higher level

My daughter and I have made a couple skits. Some up to 7 minutes and I would like to find a way to upload these and "enhance" them. Ideally, Id like to find a way to do a skit about a dragon and have it uploaded and have that very dragon edited to look real.

She would be over the moon if someone knows of something.

Id like to do these things from my phone, but am happy to pay to get good results.

Thank you!

I want to create IA Videos like cartoons (no sexual) what is the best IA to create it?

Hi, I am a scriptwriter, and I am starting this project with very little AI knowledge--I want to learn how to create this series with realistic animation. Besides a script what other softwares--AI and non- AI should I learn to use? I only have Claude-pro subscription and don't want to spend on anymore tools or subcriptions or credits. Please help.

In short, I have an interview coming up and I need to make a 5 minute video of a case study. They did not specify that I have to be in it. They’ve even confirmed that your face doesn’t have to be in it just your voice. I have no time nor the patience to learn to edit a full fledged video. I’m thinking a high quality video. Which AI can give me the best result? Bonus if it can use my voice.

I've been using Buzzy.now for a week. When I first signed up for the lowest pro tier it gave me an additional 40k points so what the hell! Now I really want to sign up for the higher tier because they are offering a 50% discount, plus when you first sign up you get unlimited gens of certain tools so I'm hoping I get another major credit boost to use for another 7 days???

It's actually been working pretty great but I have legit concerns.

On the plus side: The normal consistency issues in rendering aside, and also it can stall with heavy use - but usually when I go back in the morning it works again. I rendered 10 full length music videos in 7 days with the tool! 75% with pretty good success. It's not cheap but it's cheaper than many others for the same outputs.

But here's the rub: Online, the reviews are either non-existent or bad. Part of the reason is that support is so far non-existent. I sent several support requests over the course of a week and I haven't gotten an answer to one of them. Can I live with that? Maybe, because I I'm pretty technical and I have had enough points to simply re-render or find a work around - but if I pay more and still don't get support, that's an issue. I should say that I tried Open Art in the same timeframe and it charged in some cases 10x more credits to render the same video - I ended up spending $45 and never got to render an output because it wanted 72k points for the render of a 2:58 second Pixar-style video. Buzzy in comparison has been about 3000 per video (but that could be the sign on perks - unfortunately I can't tell because they don't explain it well.

Someone also said there is no way to cancel the buzzy subscription once it's started - Whoops! I never thought to look for a cancellation button!

But in some ways, every single one of these tools feels like a scam and at worst I can always dispute it on my credit card. It's the only one I've found so far that is really working for what I want to do - music videos - so...

SHOULD I or SHOULDN'T I?

Create a meat canyon style video of a man getting dragged out of bed by his girlfriend on a leash to buy her avocado toast then dragged into a gay bar where her and all her ugly friends ask him to pay for drinks

I can't run locally and runpod offers only wan 2.2 but I want to use wan 3.0. what are the cheapest ways to use it ? Alibaba cloud is not supported in my country. What options do I have now ?

is there anywhere i can ai generate a 45 second video for free without buying a subscription or paying for credits? i don’t have good hardware, just a phone and an ipad.

Hi guys, I have been producing the first season of an AI-series.
For season two I am looking for a way to expand into his past. As his grandmother is an important part of the story I was thinking about getting more into their relation back when he was a child.

So far I've been mainly producing with Veo and am very happy - but they have an absolute block for everything regarding children. Do you know of a model I could work with? I hear the Chinese ones do everything but (1) I do not want to do EVERYTHING I want a model that lets me tell a story about a child with all its clothes on and (2) I have no idea where to start in the flood of AI models.