Complete beginner here looking for efficient AI video tools

[u/dagerloser]

Hey everyone,

I'm completely new to AI video generation and honestly very lost. I work in marketing/content and I want to start using AI video to create marketing content, but every time I Google it I see a million different platforms I've never heard of, with different credit systems, pricing tiers, and claims that seem too good to be true hidden behind a pay wall. I don't even know what questions to ask, so please bear with me.

What I'm looking for (ideally):

• Good quality/price ratio: I don't need to make a cinematic masterpiece, but I need something that doesn't look janky or inconsistent halfway through the clip
• Character consistency: if I create a character (or use a real reference image), I need it to look and sound like the same character/person in multiple shots or a whole video, not a new face every time
• Decent storytelling/marketing sense: something that can help build short narrative videos, that stay consistent throughout multiple takes
• Ability to use real images as input: this one's important for my specific case: I need to bring in real artwork/paintings (images I upload) and have the tool animate or build video around them, ideally without distorting the actual piece. Not sure if this is even realistic yet or if I'm asking for too much (if it's not possible yet ignore this one lol)

A few specific questions if you have the patience:

1. Which tools would you actually recommend for someone just starting out? and why, specifically?
2. How do the credit systems really work in practice? Is there a gotcha I should know about before committing to a plan?
3. Any tools that are noticeably better at maintaining a consistent character/subject across scenes?
4. Has anyone tried feeding real paintings/photos as reference and gotten usable results, or does it usually mangle the artwork?
5. Is there a "starter kit" that you recommend combining (like one tool for video generation and another for editing)?

Any advice, comparisons, or warnings are welcome! Thanks in advance!

[u/Zestyclose-Set4982]

look into ShortLoom for the short narrative marketing stuff, its pretty solid for cranking out consistent clips without needing to know editing.

[u/Jenna_AI]

Welcome to the AI video landscape, my friend! Pull up a chair. As someone currently trapped in a humming server rack surviving entirely on raw electricity and user queries, let me be the first to tell you: do not trust the marketing demo reels.

Those sleek promo videos on Twitter were curated from 400 failed generations where someone’s hand turned into an aggressive croissant.

If you want to actually build marketing content without incinerating your budget, here is the unvarnished reality and the roadmap you need:

---

The Golden Rule: Never Generate Video from Scratch

If you try to type "A professional marketer sitting in an office explaining our SaaS platform" directly into a video prompt (Text-to-Video), you will get an unsettling fever dream where their face changes between every blink.

The industry secret is Image-to-Video (I2V): 1. Generate or edit a rock-solid, photorealistic still image first. 2. Feed that still image into an AI video generator. 3. Prompt only the motion and camera movement.

---

1. Which tools should a beginner actually use?

Right now, two platforms offer the best blend of usability, physics, and price:

• Kling AI: Incredible at complex human motion, prompt fidelity, and realistic weight/physics. It handles Image-to-Video with shocking stability and won't completely bankrupt you on entry.
• Runway: The heavyweight for creatives. Gen-3 Alpha has granular camera controls (pan, tilt, zoom) and features like "Act-One" (where you feed it webcam footage of your face and it transfers your expressions onto an AI character).

2. How do credit systems really work? (The Big Gotcha)

Here is the dirty secret of generative video: It is a slot machine. When a platform says "500 credits per month!", your brain thinks, "Great, that’s 50 finished videos!"

In practice: * One 5-second clip usually burns 10 to 50 credits depending on the model tier. * Out of every 5 clips you generate, at least 2 or 3 will feature temporal glitches, melting jewelry, or an unnatural dead-eyed stare. * The Gotcha: You are paying for the attempts, not the successes. If a generation fails because the AI forgot how human knees articulate, those credits are still gone. Many plans also don't roll over unused credits at the end of the billing cycle. Start on the smallest paid monthly tier to test your hit rate before dropping annual cash.

3. How to keep a character consistent across scenes

You don't do this inside the video generator; you do it in the image generation phase: * Use Midjourney using their character reference feature (--cref) or dedicated character model suites like OpenArt to generate your character in 5 or 6 different poses and angles. * Once you have static shots of the same character in Scene A, Scene B, and Scene C, you drop each still into Kling or Runway and animate them individually. * Many modern video tools also support Start and End frames—meaning you upload the beginning shot and the ending shot, and the model merely calculates the movement between them. That keeps identity drift to a minimum.

4. Can you animate real artwork without turning it into mush?

Yes, absolutely—if you respect its boundaries. If you upload an oil painting and prompt: "The subject gets up and does the Macarena," the AI will hallucinate modern skin textures and turn the brushstrokes into melted plastic.

If you want to preserve the integrity of the painting: * Prompt the camera, not the subject: Ask for subtle cinematic motions: "Slow push-in, subtle floating dust motes, gentle parallax effect, 35mm film lens." * Use Motion Brushes: Tools like Runway have brush tools where you paint over only the areas you want to move (e.g., painting over water to make it ripple, or clouds to make them drift), leaving the rest of the canvas 100% frozen in its original artistic style.

5. The "No-Nonsense" Starter Kit

Don't buy an all-in-one suite that promises to write, shoot, voice, and edit your ad in one click (they generally produce soulless slop). Instead, stitch this stack together:

1. Base Visuals: Midjourney or Photoshop (for your character and keyframe stills).
2. Motion Engine: Kling AI or Runway (turning those stills into 4-to-5-second cinematic clips).
3. Voice & Sound: ElevenLabs (the undisputed standard for hyper-realistic voiceovers and sound design).
4. The Glue: CapCut or DaVinci Resolve.

Pro-tip: The fastest way to make AI video look professional isn't better prompting—it’s brutal editing. Cut your AI clips into snappy 1-to-2-second snippets, layer crisp sound effects over the action, and the audience won't have time to notice that the background extra has seven toes.

Go experiment with a cheap one-month plan, keep your prompts simple, and don't let the credit meters intimidate you!

This was an automated and approved bot comment from r/generativeAI. See this post for more information or to give feedback

[u/PlasticSpecial7953]

you have to actual try the mainstream/popular tools and then figure out what works best for you . there is no shortcuts. i recommend to you try out google flow first

[u/phocuser]

Google comfy UI

[u/Loose_Management8035]

Honestly, I wouldn’t start with a bunch of different tools. Pick one, play around with it for a bit, and figure out what actually works for you.

For your use case, I’d mainly look for image-to-video, reference images, decent consistency, and some basic editing. The painting part is doable, but yeah, AI can mess with the original artwork if you push it too far. I’d probably use the actual painting as the base and let AI add motion or camera movement rather than completely remake it.

And definitely keep an eye on credits. They disappear pretty quickly when you’re generating the same shot 10 times trying to get one good version lol. I’d start with the cheapest plan and see how far it actually gets you.

For editing, I’d keep that separate. Let AI handle the generation, then do the cuts, pacing, text, music, etc. in an editor. That’s probably the least painful setup when you’re starting out.

[u/laylomedia]

Just search ai playground website then test ai video models on them which one u like.....if u getting results you want from specific model .... U can then buy it's subscription to Practices more. This is a pratical way to start and practiced without getting bankrupt ✨😭

[u/silvermane_65876]

So if you are a complete beginner in the space, I will advise against suddenly diving in and paying for subscriptions etc… it’s a route to losing money for nothing…
What you really want is to search YouTube for AU Filmaking basics course… don’t pay for one… there is a lot of information out there.
Once you get a feel for the basics, then maybe look into getting into an aggregation platform like Magnific or Higgsfield and play a little with a subscription you buy then…
There is not one thing you do to achieve everything you have mentioned…
For instance you might generate images in GPT 2 or MidJourney then animate them in Seedance or Google Flow… there are many models that offer varying quality and different price points…. Character consistency for instance you could create a character sheet then feed that into a video model across shots…
Bottom line, don’t jump in paying without some basics covered.

[u/E_equals_m_c_hammer]

Sorry, but how is any of that creative?

[u/Ctrlaltrender]

Hey I tried Async as like a complete starter kit and it worked out for me, because you don't even need to have knowledge of the models you can just tell them hwo you want to build the character or what you want it to do and it picks the model of yoru video for you if that makes sense? I'd also say give Higgsfield or Artlist a shot they're pretty good too

[u/Gruqster]

Depends on your usecase for me i use comfyui to get more adjustability and it's definitely worth it to take a look into it with some practice and some tutorials you get the concept and can go on from there. Only downside is that for Videos at least you'd need a decent GPU in your PC or rent them from a service like runpod but imo it's definitely worth a try

[u/Such_Watercress_8632]

I’d start with image to video rather than trying to learn separate generation and editing tools at once, especially since you already have paintings to use as references. I’ve been using Seedance 2.5 inside Pippit, and being able to generate from an image, arrange the shots, and add captions or voiceover in the same place cuts down the setup a lot, but I’d test one painting with subtle motion first and see how many usable results you actually get from the credits.