guide
A "previously on" recap, cut from your own takes
Pick up to four finished takes from earlier episodes. The recap generator slices the start of each, speeds the whole thing up by a quarter, caps it at twelve seconds and puts it at the front of your next episode cut.
From the showcase
Rendered with the prompts shown in the studio.
Why a recap is not a trailer
A trailer sells an episode nobody has watched. A recap reminds a viewer of things they already saw, in the order that makes the next scene land. That difference decides how the clip gets built. A recap wants the moment the logbook page went missing, the moment the pawnbroker named his price, the moment someone refused to go back down the stairs, and nothing else. It should be short enough that the viewer never reaches for the skip button, and quick enough that the pace tells them a lot happened.
That is why every recap here comes from footage you already rendered rather than from a fresh model call. The takes exist, they are finished, and they are in the right series. The generator only needs to know which four and in what order.
How the twelve seconds are spent
You choose between one and four takes from episodes earlier than the one you are working on. Each take gives up a slice from its opening, because the opening of a take is usually its clearest establishing moment. The slices are divided evenly across your picks; a take shorter than its share gives the spare seconds to the others. Everything is then sped up to 1.25x, including the audio, and the result is hard-capped at twelve seconds so a four-take recap never overruns the episode it belongs to.
The clip lands in your library as its own video with a record of which takes it was built from. When you cut the episode, the recap is prepended automatically unless you switch it off for that cut.
- Up to four source takes from earlier episodes
- Speed-ramped 1.25x with audio kept in sync
- Twelve-second cap, enforced twice
- Two credits per recap, no model call
Choosing the right four takes
The best recaps answer a single question: what does the viewer need to remember for this episode to make sense? Open the continuity ledger for the series, look at the threads still marked open, and pick the take where each of those threads was last visible. If the episode you are cutting resolves the matchbook thread, the recap should show the matchbook. If a character learns something this episode that another character already knows, show the moment the first character learned it.
Order matters too. The recap plays in the order you pick the takes, so put the oldest beat first and the cliffhanger last. The last slice is what the viewer carries straight into your cold open.
What happens when you re-cut
Episodes change. If you render a better take for an earlier episode, you can rebuild the recap with the new one; the previous recap is replaced rather than left lying around. Takes that a recap was built from are protected from deletion until the recap is gone, so you never end up with a montage whose sources vanished.
Everything renders in 9:16 at the tallest resolution among your picks, with H.264 video and AAC audio, ready for any vertical feed.
Questions
- Can I use takes from the current episode in its own recap?
- No. A recap only accepts takes from episodes numbered lower than the one it is for. That keeps "previously on" honest; it shows what came before.
- Does the recap use any AI model?
- No model is involved. The recap is cut and re-encoded with ffmpeg from your existing takes, which is why it costs two credits regardless of how long the source takes are.
- What if my picks add up to less than twelve seconds?
- Then the recap is simply shorter. The twelve seconds are a ceiling, not a target. A tight eight-second recap is often better than a padded twelve.
- Who owns the episodes I make here?
- You do. The takes, recaps, teasers and cuts you render belong to you under the terms of service, and you can use them wherever you like. How copyright applies to AI-assisted video differs from one country to the next, so if the rights matter for a specific project, ask a lawyer where you live.
- When do credits come back?
- Only when a job fails before any work starts: a prompt that trips moderation, a take that never reaches the render queue, a save that fails. Once a model or the cutting step has started, the credits for that job are spent even if the result disappoints or is flagged afterwards.
Ready when the series is
Open the studio with this guide's settings already selected.