How do you use AI video in a VFX pipeline?

The hard part of using AI video in production is keeping everything controlled, traceable and repeatable, not generating the clip itself. A pipeline that works needs four things. It needs inputs you control (plates, references, 3D layouts), a record of exactly how each shot was made, the ability to re-run a shot with one change, and clean handoff to the tools you finish in. OTOY Studio is built around that.

A setup that works

Start from references, not prompts. Feed the models what you already have: a plate, a first and last frame, a character reference, a camera move rendered from 3D. Seedance 2.0 takes image, video and audio references in one run. Kling O3 takes several reference images and can build multi-shot sequences. Veo 3.1 has first/last frame and reference modes.

Keep the graph. In OTOY Studio each shot is a node graph. The prompt, references, model, settings and output are all saved together, and every run is kept in the history. When a note comes back, you change one input and re-run instead of starting over. Saved workflows can be reused on the next shot.

Edit footage you already have. Video-to-video models change existing shots instead of replacing them. Decart Lucy handles wardrobe, object edits and restyles. Kling O3 and O1 have video edit and video reference nodes. Wan 2.2 Animate moves a character with a performance from another clip. Beeble SwitchX relights a subject and composites it into a new background.

Composite and hand off. The video compositor layers clips, images and audio on a track timeline in the browser without spending credits. It exports an MP4 or transparent WebM, or an FCP7 XML package for DaVinci Resolve that keeps transforms, opacity, crop and supported blend modes. Luma Ray 3.2 can also export EXR frame sequences for HDR work.

Upscale last. Run Topaz Image or Video Upscale as the final node rather than generating at maximum resolution from the start.

What to check before committing a model to a show

• Rights. Check each model's commercial terms. OTOY Studio lets you use outputs commercially with no attribution. Moonvalley's Marey is trained on licensed footage, which some studios require.
• Consistency. Test the same character or product across ten shots, not one.
• Cost at volume. Per-second prices vary by more than 10x between models. See how much AI video costs per second.

Last verified 2026-09-28. Prices and model lists come from OTOY Studio's billing configuration, exported 2026-09-28.