Common questions, straight answers.

No. Our hosted plans include everything you need. Self-hosting requires a standard cloud server and the dependencies listed in our self-host guide.

Yes — Professional and above include team seats. Roles are Owner, Producer, Reviewer, and Viewer.

Settings → Subscription → Cancel. Effective at the end of the current billing period. Data export and deletion paths are self-serve.

Yes. Professional and above include team seats with defined roles — Owner, Producer, Reviewer, and Viewer — plus shared brand, voice, and media libraries so every production stays on-brand. Reviewers can sign off at each phase gate, and clients can be looped in for review. It's agency-grade collaboration without enterprise pricing.

Phase 1 (planning) generation runs ~30–90 seconds; allow 5–7 minutes wall-clock if you review the plan before approving. Phase 2 typically 2–10 minutes, Phase 3 1–3 minutes, Phase 4 1–8 minutes depending on length and vendor load. Phase 5 is instant (under a minute). End-to-end auto-approve usually completes in 10–20 minutes.

Yes. Regenerate one image, rewrite one script line, replace one clip — without re-rendering anything else.

Up to 12 minutes on Professional, up to 30 on Enterprise. Longer videos available on request.

Only on the Free plan. All paid plans are watermark-free.

Yes. The finished, publish-ready video is yours — and so is every asset behind it: the written script, the voiceover audio, and each scene the pipeline produced. They are downloadable alongside the final MP4. There is no lock-in: you own your work and can take it anywhere.

A credit is the unit we meter AI video production in. A production is charged once, at the moment you press Create & Start. Everything around it is free: building a draft in the wizard, browsing the media, brand and voice libraries, previewing voices, reviewing and approving a phase, rewriting text, and downloading a finished video as many times as you like.

They are two separate ledgers, shown side by side in Settings → Account Balance. Your Account balance is money — it holds things like refunds, goodwill adjustments and referral earnings, and it's what a cash withdrawal draws on. Your Credits balance is production capacity: it's what every video is charged against, and it can't be withdrawn or converted back into money.

Three places. Settings → Account Balance shows the total plus the split between plan and purchased credits. The credits pill on Settings → Plan Overview and on the Shop page shows the same total. And the create-video wizard prints "You have N credits" directly beneath the Quality & Cost slider — so your balance sits next to the cost of the video you're about to make.

Plan credits are the allocation that arrives with your subscription or purchase. Purchased credits are the ones you top up with. Spending always draws down plan credits first, so your topped-up credits are preserved for as long as possible. Purchased credits never expire and survive a plan change; plan credits are tied to the plan that granted them. Both are listed separately in Settings → Account Balance.

Plan credits stay in your balance for as long as your subscription keeps renewing — a renewal adds the new allocation on top of what you already hold rather than resetting you to zero. What ends them is changing plan: they're forfeited when you cancel or downgrade. Purchased credits are unaffected by any of that and never expire.

Purchased credits stay with you — they survive cancellation, upgrade and downgrade alike. Plan credits from the plan you're leaving are forfeited when the change takes effect, and the app warns you before you confirm. If you're holding a large plan balance and thinking about switching, spend it first.

No. Purchased credits are non-refundable and can't be converted back into money. Subscription refunds are a separate matter and are covered by the refund policy. This is exactly why the wizard shows you the cost of a video before you commit rather than after.

A production is charged to the account that owns it — the account that pressed Create & Start. Credit top-ups are bought in your personal context only: while you're working inside an agency context the Shop hides the buy option, because credits there are managed by the agency administrator.

There is no single number, because the cost is computed from the video you actually configured — and the wizard shows you that number before you spend anything. Set your options and read the credit figure next to Target Duration: that is precisely what will be charged. Four things move it: length, the Quality & Cost tier, how many additional languages you add, and how many input attachments you add beyond the free allowance.

In four live places in the create-video wizard: the credit figure beside the Target Duration label, which updates as you drag either the Duration or the Quality & Cost slider; the Additional Languages panel, which states the per-language cost and the running total; the Input Media line, which shows how many of your attachments are chargeable; and the final Review step, which restates the figure next to your quality tier. Nothing is charged until you press Create & Start.

Length is the largest lever, then the Quality & Cost tier — higher tiers route to more capable, more expensive models. Each additional language is a complete second video, so it adds close to the cost of the master. Attachments past the free allowance add a fixed amount each. Rather than memorising rules, drag the sliders and watch the number move: it's faster than any table and it's always current.

Because the real production cost of a longer video grows faster than the extra seconds suggest — more scenes, more generated shots, more voiceover — and pricing follows that curve in bands rather than a flat per-second rate. The practical consequence is that nudging the duration can step you into the next band. If you're near a boundary, move the slider a notch each way and watch the credit figure to find where the step is.

Yes. Every additional language spawns its own complete production — its own visuals, its own voiceover, its own render — so it costs close to the master video rather than a small translation fee. The wizard's Additional Languages panel spells out the per-language figure and the new total before you add a single one.

The first few attachments on a production are free; beyond that each one adds a fixed amount. The Input Media line shows the free allowance, the per-attachment cost and how many of yours are chargeable, updating as you add files. A logo attached automatically by a brand preset is never counted and never uses up a free slot.

There are five, from Draft to Showcase. Draft and Economy are for finding out whether an idea, script or style works at all. Balanced is the sensible everyday default. Premium and Showcase route to the most capable models and earn their cost on a finished piece you're going to publish. The pattern most teams settle into: iterate at a low tier, then produce the approved concept once at a high one.

Once, when you press Create & Start. Building a draft costs nothing. When you move past the Voice step the wizard checks that your balance covers the video you've configured and warns you early if it doesn't — but that's a check, not a deduction. Nothing leaves your balance until you start the production.

Nothing is charged. A draft you never start costs zero, and so does a wizard you back out of. You can leave drafts sitting for as long as you like and change your mind about them freely.

You're refunded in full, automatically. A genuine pipeline failure returns the entire amount to your balance, and the refund appears in your Credits Transaction History alongside the original charge, so you can see it happened. Retrying a failed production doesn't double-charge you — a production is only ever charged once.

Input rejected by the content-moderation gate is not refundable. That's a Terms of Service rejection rather than a pipeline failure, and it is the one case where credits are consumed without producing a video. If you're submitting anything you think might be borderline, check the acceptable-use section of the Terms first.

The wizard stops you before the Branding step and tells you exactly how many credits you need against how many you hold, then takes you to the Shop to top up. Because a production is paid for in full at the moment it starts, a video that has already started can never stall halfway for want of credits.

Settings → Account Balance → Credits Transaction History lists every movement: allocations granted, top-up purchases, production start charges and failure refunds. Each row carries a date, a reason naming the production it belongs to, whether it hit plan or purchased credits, and your balance afterwards — enough to reconcile a whole month line by line.

Four habits do most of the work. Iterate cheap, finish expensive — prove the idea at Draft or Economy, then produce the winner once at a high tier. Watch the meter when you change length, because the duration bands mean a modest trim can save more than you'd expect. Keep attachments inside the free allowance unless a file genuinely earns its place. And produce the master first, add languages after you're happy with it — each language is a full video, so translating a version you later scrap is the most expensive mistake available.

No. A production is charged once, at the start. Editing a scene, rewriting a script line, regenerating an image or clip, re-rendering and downloading again all happen inside that one charge. This is deliberate: you should be able to get a video right without being taxed for each correction.

The Shop lists credit packs with the credits and price of each; larger packs carry bonus credits. Purchases are one-time and added permanently — they never expire and they survive plan changes. When the wizard finds you short it shows a red "Buy more credits" link that goes straight there.

Always in the app. The Shop shows current pack prices and what each plan includes; Settings → Account Balance shows what you hold; the wizard's live meter shows what a specific video will cost. We tune rates and allocations over time and pass improvements on to customers, so treat the in-app figures as authoritative over any number quoted anywhere else — including this page.

Yes. Upgrades are prorated and effective immediately. Downgrades apply at the next billing date.

Video output is metered in credits rather than a fixed video count, so the question is really about credits. Plan credits stay in your balance while your subscription keeps renewing, and are forfeited only when you cancel or downgrade; purchased top-up credits never expire. See Credits — how they work for the detail.

In credits. Each production is charged once when it starts, at a cost computed from its length, quality tier, extra languages and extra attachments — and shown to you in the wizard before you commit. The three sections above cover how credits work, what drives a video's cost, and how to make them go further; the full walkthrough shows it screen by screen.

Major credit cards via your local payment provider, plus invoiced ACH/SEPA for Enterprise.

See the refund policy — prorated within 14 days, plus credit-to-account for partial periods.

Default routing uses leading multimodal AI for image and video generation and premium voice synthesis. You can plug in additional providers.

No. We handle the AI for you — no accounts to create, no API keys to manage, no juggling models or providers. Failover between providers is automatic, and AI is billed at cost. Bringing your own keys is an optional advanced path if you prefer to manage providers yourself.

Yes. Bring keys for any supported AI provider. You're billed by the vendor; we don't markup AI cost.

Phase-confidence checks flag low-quality scenes for human review even in Auto-Approve mode. You can regenerate without burning the whole video.

Your videos are stored securely in the cloud and stay available in your library. You can download or re-download them whenever you need.

Always. MP4 export is one click, and you also get a shareable link you can embed directly.

Twenty-four production languages for narration and subtitles. RTL languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Urdu) ship with correct script direction.

Yes — per-locale voice presets preserve gender and tone across translations.

Open the production from your dashboard and check the phase status — most stalls are temporary and resume on their own within a few minutes. If it is still stuck, use the Cancel & Retry button on the production page; this restarts only the failed phase, not the whole video, and does not consume an extra video credit. If the retry also fails, contact support@studiocut.video with the production ID and we will resolve it.

Vendor failover is built in. If one provider is degraded, your video automatically switches to a backup — you don't have to do anything.

Email support@studiocut.video or use the in-app feedback button.

StudioCut.Video runs an MCP server, so an assistant can read the design vocabulary, dry-run a batch of briefs, create drafts, quote a production, start it, show you the storyboard, approve it once you say so, poll progress and fetch a download link. Twelve tools in total, and exactly one of them spends credits. See the full picture.

Any client that speaks the Model Context Protocol over HTTP with a bearer token. Claude Desktop and Claude Code work today, as does any agent framework where you can set a URL and an Authorization header. The setup guide takes about five minutes.

Your plan credits and your purchased credits — the same balance the app draws on, charged once when a production starts. Drafting, validating, quoting, polling, reading a storyboard and fetching a download link are all free. An assistant can also read what a key is allowed to spend before it designs a batch, so a shortfall arrives while it is still useful.

Plan feature gates do not apply to assistant-driven production, and this work does not consume the monthly video allowance you bought for the app — the two run in parallel. What still applies to everyone: your storage limit, the content policy, voice and language compatibility, up to five extra languages per production, and the rate and concurrency limits on each key.

Sometimes, and the rule is narrow. A production started through an assistant carries a 12.5% premium, and only when both the quality tier is 2 or higher and the target duration is over 30 seconds. Below either threshold the price is identical to the app. The premium appears as its own line in the quote breakdown before anything is charged — you never meet it for the first time on an invoice.

No. Starting a production requires a confirm token issued by a price quote in the last five minutes, and if the price moves in between, the start is refused and the new figure reported. You can also set a credit ceiling on each key — per day, week or month — and a start that would breach it is refused before any money moves. One production runs at a time per key, so a batch is a queue rather than a stampede.

It can approve the storyboard when you tell it to, and not otherwise — there is no override setting. And it cannot publish at all: there is no publish tool, because pushing a video to a platform is irreversible and outward-facing, so it stays in the app where a person does it deliberately.

Each key is bound at creation to either your personal account or one specific agency, and the binding cannot be changed afterwards. There is no argument that widens scope and no way to switch context mid-conversation. If you need both, generate two keys.

Thirty days at most, and you get reminder emails a week and a day beforehand. Rotate issues a replacement immediately while keeping the old key alive for a grace period, so a config file is updated on your schedule rather than during an outage. A key nobody has used for a fortnight is revoked after a warning — any authenticated request resets that clock, so a live integration is never affected.

On their own list on the MCP and API Keys page, separate from the main production grid and the Media Library — so an overnight batch never buries the videos you are making by hand. Ownership, downloads and storage work exactly the same way.

Only if you choose that when you enable API access — it is a required choice, not a silent default, and you can change it at any time. If you turn it on, the clock starts when a video download link is issued, and output you never downloaded is never auto-deleted. Deletion removes the files but keeps the record, its name, cost and dates, and any production can be marked Keep to exempt it permanently.

The next start is refused with a clear explanation of what was needed against what is available, and the work already running is unaffected — a production is paid for in full when it starts, so it can never stall halfway. If you set a low-balance threshold, we prepare a top-up invoice and email you the payment link. No card is ever charged automatically.