Draft at 480P, Finish at 720P or 1080P: When It Saves Credits, When It Does Not

The workflow

1. Generate every segment at the default 480P tier. 2. Watch each one and note what is wrong — a face, an action, a room, a line. 3. Fix the cause where it lives: the sheet in Step 2, the description, the shot text, the state pick. 4. Regenerate the fixed segments, still at 480P, until the shot is right. 5. Switch the selector to 720P or 1080P and regenerate the segments you keep, once. 6. Composite. The mistakes are found at the cheap tier; the expensive tier is paid once per segment — at the price of paying for the whole episode once more at the cheap tier.

The numbers for a ten-segment episode

Ten segments of 12 seconds is 120 seconds of video. Drafted at 480P: 120 × 10 credits. Say four segments need a second draft: another 48 × 10. Then a final pass of all ten at 720P: 120 × 19. Compare generating straight at 720P and redoing those four there: 168 × 19. Here the draft route costs more: the extra 120 seconds at 10 outweigh the four retakes it made cheaper. Run the same episode to 1080P and the two routes come out roughly even: 120 × 38 plus the drafts against 168 × 38. The rule: the draft pass costs the whole episode once at the draft rate, and saves the difference between the two rates on every retaken second. It wins in credits when the final tier costs several times the draft tier and you expect several retakes. A full episode budget, line by line: Where Your Credits Go in One Episode.

What the draft cannot tell you

480P shows composition, action, faces, timing and dialogue — everything that comes from the storyboard. It cannot show fine texture, and a stylised look flattens more at 480P than a realistic one. Judge the shot, not the pixels: if the face and the blocking are right, the 1080P take will be the same shot, sharper. If the face drifts at 480P, it will drift at 1080P too — My Character’s Face Changed.

Versions, and which one the composite uses

Every generation of a segment is kept as a version. The timeline shows the active one; switch between them from the segment’s version control, and the composite joins the active version of each segment. So a 480P draft can stay active for a segment you are still deciding on while others are already at 1080P. Downloads follow the active version too. Composite and Share an Episode.

When to skip the draft

A single short segment, a shot you have already generated successfully in a neighbouring episode, or a project where the first draft came out right for every segment: go straight to the final tier. Finishing at 720P, drafting is a working method, not a saving: it keeps the look-and-fix loop cheap per attempt, and costs a little more overall. Finishing at 1080P with a new cast or a new set, where several retakes are likely, it is the cheaper route.

FAQ

Updated September 27, 2026