Recap videos built from the episodes you already made

Recaps as a working part of the series

In most tools a recap is an afterthought you assemble in an editor the night before posting. Here it is a first-class object. Every episode after the first has a recap slot, every recap records which takes it came from, and the episode cut knows to put it first. That makes the recap something you can revise as the series evolves rather than a file you exported once and forgot.

It also makes recaps cheap. Because the generator is cutting footage rather than generating it, a recap costs two credits whether it draws on four short takes or four long ones.

How a recap gets assembled

Each selected take contributes its opening slice. The budget is twelve seconds of output, which at 1.25x speed means fifteen seconds of source footage split evenly across your picks. Shorter takes give up their spare share. The slices are letterboxed or pillarboxed into a common 9:16 frame, re-encoded to the same codec and frame rate, concatenated, and capped once more at twelve seconds. Audio is sped up with the picture so dialogue stays intelligible and in sync.

The output goes to your library with a poster frame and a small preview, like any take, and shows up in the episode panel as the current recap.

• Opening slice from each pick
• Even split of the time budget
• Single 9:16 frame for every source resolution
• Twelve seconds, 1.25x, AAC audio

Picking for clarity

A recap that tries to show everything shows nothing. Three or four beats is the right number. Lead with the oldest beat the episode depends on and finish with the cliffhanger. If two takes cover the same thread, pick the one with the clearer image; the viewer has two or three seconds per beat and needs to recognise the moment instantly.

If your series has a recurring prop (a vial of sand, a ring of keys, a burnt matchbook), recaps are where it earns its place. A single shot of the prop carries a whole thread without a word.

Rebuilding and deleting

Recaps also travel well on their own. Because each one is a complete clip with a poster frame, you can publish it separately as a stand-alone hook for an episode, or keep it private and let it live only inside the cut. Series that post daily often publish the recap in the morning and the episode in the evening, which is two posts from one render budget.

Rebuild a recap any time; the old one is replaced. The takes a recap was built from cannot be deleted while the recap exists, so a source never disappears from under a montage. Delete the recap first and the takes become deletable again. Cutting the episode again picks up whatever recap is current at that moment.