AI video for beginners — your first clip in five minutes

Most people's first AI video takes an afternoon, and about twenty minutes of that is actual work. The rest is reading model comparisons before you have any idea what you want. This guide skips ahead: sign up, write one prompt, pick one engine, press generate. Then go read the comparisons — with a render of your own to argue with.

Step 1 — sign up and look at your wallet

New accounts get 50 free credits. Credits never expire, and failed generations refund themselves automatically, so nothing you are about to do can quietly drain an account.

Fifty credits is a real budget for some things and a partial one for others. Worth knowing before you start clicking:

• An image is 10 credits, whichever of the three image models you use.
• Speech is 3 credits per 100 characters on the flagship voice, 2 on the faster one.
• The cheapest video clip is 100 credits for 5 seconds on Motion One.

So the free 50 will get you five stills or a couple of narration lines, and your first clip needs a top-up. The entry pack is $10 for 1,000 credits — ten 5-second clips — and at that pack a credit is roughly a cent, which makes the pricing page easy to read in your head. Plans exist too, and they mostly buy monthly credits, longer clips and access to more engines.

Step 2 — one prompt, one paragraph

Open the video studio. The default tab is Quick — one prompt in, one clip out. That is the whole tool.

The composer likes a single flowing paragraph, roughly 30 to 80 words, that names five things in order: the subject, the motion, the camera, the light, the mood. Not a list of keywords, not a screenplay. Something like this:

A young woman in a yellow raincoat walks along a harbor wall at dawn while gulls scatter ahead of her, slow tracking shot from her left at shoulder height, thin gray morning light with a lighthouse blinking in the background, wind moving her hood, calm and slightly lonely mood.

That is 48 words and every one of them is a decision the engine would otherwise make for you.

If your draft is three words and a feeling, press Enhance. It is a free rewrite that turns notes into a director-grade prompt, and it costs nothing to run twice. Surprise me invents one outright, which is a decent way to see what a good prompt looks like before you write your own. Neither one charges credits — you only pay when you render.

Step 3 — pick the engine

Under the composer you choose which model shoots the clip. Motion One is the right first choice: it is open to every account including the free tier, it costs 100 credits for 5 seconds or 180 for 10, it renders at 480p or 720p, and it is the uncensored engine on the roster.

The rest of the model list sits behind plans — Seedance Lite and Hailuo 02 from Hobby up, Seedance 2.5, Seedance 1.0 Pro, Kling 2.5 Turbo and Veo 3 Fast from Creator up — and they trade credits for resolution, length or a specific strength. Those premium engines are moderated upstream by their providers, so they stay SFW. None of that matters for clip number one. Pick Motion One, learn the loop, then go shopping.

Step 4 — length, format and a camera move

Three settings, thirty seconds of thinking:

• Length. Motion One renders 5 or 10 seconds. Your plan also caps clip length — 10 s on the free tier, 15 s on Hobby, 20 s on Creator, 30 s on Studio and above — so the pills that are grayed out are telling you something true.
• Format. 16:9 wide, 9:16 vertical or 1:1 square. Choose by where the clip is going, not by habit. Vertical is not a crop you apply later; it changes how you frame the subject.
• Camera move. Seventeen of them, from Static and Slow pan through Push-in, Orbit, Handheld, Dolly zoom and FPV drone. Pick one, or write the direction into the prompt — the studio detects written directions like "wide shot" or "dolly" too. If you are not sure, Push-in is the safe one. It reads as intent, and it forgives a lot. There is a longer explanation of what each camera move actually does if you want it.

Step 5 — press generate, then stop watching

Video is rendered as a job, not as a page load. Once you submit, the render queue in the studio topbar tracks it — you can write the next prompt, open another tool, or wander off. Nothing is lost by navigating away. Creator plans and up get a priority video queue.

Times vary by engine, length and how busy things are, so treat the queue as a notification and not a progress bar. If a render fails, it refunds itself and offers a retry. If a request is blocked by the acceptable-use policy, it returns a content_blocked error and is never charged.

Step 6 — where the clip ends up

Every render is saved to your library automatically, free, with its full recipe attached — prompt, engine, length, format, camera move, everything. That is the part most people miss on day one and miss badly on day thirty, when they want the clip they made "the good way" and cannot reconstruct it.

From a library card you can:

• Remix — reload the whole recipe into the composer and change one thing.
• Animate — take a still and make it the source for an image-to-video render.
• Publish — put the clip on the community feed with a title and a cover. Likes, comments and views are public; your prompt and settings stay private.

Your second clip should be a Remix of your first with exactly one variable changed. That is how you learn what this thing responds to, and it is much faster than reading another guide — including this one.

If you want more examples before you write, the text-to-video tool page has the full inventory of what the composer accepts, and credits explains the wallet in one page.

FAQ

Do I need a paid plan to make an AI video?

No. The free tier includes Motion One, clips up to 10 s, and all the image, voice and text models. You do need enough credits — a 5-second Motion One clip is 100, and signup gives you 50 — so in practice the first clip follows a $10 pack or a plan.

How long does a render take?

It depends on the engine, the clip length and the queue, so there is no one number. You do not have to watch it happen: the queue keeps the job, and the finished clip lands in your library. Creator and above get a priority video queue.

What happens if the render comes out wrong?

You pay per render, so a bad result costs credits — but a failed render is refunded automatically. The cheap fix is Remix with one changed variable rather than a fresh prompt from scratch.

Ready to spend your first hundred credits? Open the video studio — new accounts start with 50 free credits.