Script first: why the video director asks you to confirm one thing

Making a video is really three stages: write the script, generate key frames from the script, then render video from the key frames.

Only the first stage needs a person. Whether a frame should be redrawn, how many seconds each shot runs, how the cuts connect — machines judge these more consistently than we do. But whether "tearing open a drip bag one-handed on a rush-hour train" is a story that lands is not something a machine can judge.

So the pause goes at step one

Open the video director and all you see is four candidate scripts. No storyboard, no key-frame preview, no pile of parameters you do not need to decide yet. Pick one, confirm.

After you confirm, the script list collapses to just the one you chose and every setting locks. Not greyed out but still clickable — genuinely not clickable. Unselected options drop to faint text, the corner says "Settings locked", and changing anything means clicking "Redo with another script".

We have watched too many products make the same mistake here: once execution starts, the interface still looks operable, and clicking does nothing. Users assume it froze.

The other two steps run themselves

Four shots get their key frames in order, then each clip renders in order. The progress bar tracks completed shots, not an estimated clock — because we do not know how long this run will take either. A slow network or a long queue turns "about 30 seconds" into a lie.

Once the clips are ready, quota is deducted by the length you picked and everything can go straight to the publishing queue.

One problem we have not solved

Real generation takes minutes: a dozen seconds per key frame, one to three minutes per clip, five to fifteen minutes end to end.

Nobody watches a screen for fifteen minutes. So this still needs three things: copy for every intermediate state, the ability to leave and come back (the job runs server-side; closing the dialog should not interrupt it), and a notification when it finishes.

The first two are underway.