Glossary

Plain-English definitions for the film production, AI, and account terms you'll encounter in CookFlix.

Campaign & Creative Terms

Business Brief — A written description of your product, audience, and goals that the AI uses as its starting point. Think of it as a creative brief you'd give to an ad agency.

Campaign Objective — The goal of your ad (brand awareness, product sales, lead generation, app downloads, event promotion, brand loyalty, social engagement). Helps the AI tailor recommendations.

Genre — The creative style or category of your ad (comedy, documentary, emotional narrative, action, etc.). Different genres produce very different tones.

Logline — A one- or two-sentence summary of an ad concept. The short storyline ideas you choose between before generating a full screenplay.

Screenplay — The full script for your video ad: characters, scenes, dialogue, camera directions, and audio cues. CookFlix generates these from your chosen logline.

Storyboard — A structured breakdown of a video into scenes and shots. Stored as JSON behind the scenes; drives the entire production process.

Brand Asset — A logo, product image, or short clip you upload at the campaign level. The AI uses brand assets as visual references in shots so your real product can appear in the ad.

Film Production Terms

Character — A person (or personified figure) who appears in your ad. Each has a name, description, and visual appearance the AI uses for consistent images.

Location — A setting where scenes take place ("Modern Office", "City Park at Sunset"). The AI generates one reference image per location.

Scene — A sequence of action in one location at one time, made up of one or more shots.

Shot — A single continuous camera take within a scene. Each shot becomes one video clip.

Shot Type — How the camera frames the subject. Common types:

• Wide Shot (WS) — Shows the full environment.
• Medium Shot (MS) — Roughly waist-up; the most common dialogue framing.
• Medium Close-Up (MCU) — Chest-up; intimate but still shows body language.
• Close-Up (CU) — Tight on a face or object; used for emotion or product detail.
• Extreme Close-Up (ECU) — Very tight (an eye, a hand, a label).
• Over-the-Shoulder (OTS) — Camera looks past one character at another. Common in conversation.

Start Frame / End Frame — The first and last image of a shot. The AI can animate between them for a controlled video.

Aspect Ratio — Frame proportions. CookFlix uses 4:3 for character portraits; the project itself runs in 16:9 (landscape) or 9:16 (vertical).

Visual Style — The project-wide look applied to every generated asset. Options: Photorealistic, Animated 3D, Cartoon, Sketch.

Director's Chair — A plain-language input on each shot for camera direction. Translates instructions like "slow push-in" into prompt updates.

Production Modes

Manual Production — You step through the workflow generating each asset yourself.

Agentic Production — The system runs the full pipeline (characters → locations → shots) automatically while you watch live progress.

Sequential / Parallel (Agentic Mode) — Sequential generates one phase at a time; Parallel generates items concurrently to finish faster (recommended).

Re-do Film Production — Restart a project either from scratch (clear everything) or by keeping existing assets and only regenerating missing parts.

Library Terms

Library Element — A reusable character, location, or prop with reference images and an optional description.

@mention — Typing @ in a prompt textarea opens an autocomplete that inserts a Library element or brand asset reference into the prompt.

Performance Sample Video — A 3–8 second clip attached to a Character library element, used as a voice and expression reference. Can be uploaded or recorded live in the browser.

Video Generation Terms

Image to Video — A generation mode where the AI starts from a single image and creates motion, deciding how the scene evolves.

Start-End to Video — A mode where the AI creates a smooth transition between two images. More predictable than Image to Video.

Video Model — The AI model used to generate clips. CookFlix offers Veo 3.1 (fast, preset durations) and Kling 3.0 (alternative style, slider durations; prompts are auto-optimized for Kling).

Reference Image — An existing image (character portrait, location, custom upload, brand asset) provided as a visual guide.

Prompt — Text that tells the AI what to generate. CookFlix auto-creates prompts from your storyboard but you can edit them for control.

Video Editor Terms

Timeline — Horizontal area where you arrange clips, audio, and overlays in sequence (left-to-right).

Track — A horizontal lane on the timeline. Video tracks hold clips; audio tracks hold music and sound effects; overlay tracks hold static images.

Playhead — The vertical line marking the current playback position.

Clip — A single piece of media (video, audio, image) on the timeline.

Split — Cuts a clip into two pieces at the playhead.

Trim — Shortens a clip by dragging an edge. Reversible — drag back out to restore.

Export — Renders the timeline into a single MP4 file.

FFmpeg — The video processing engine running on the server that stitches everything together. You don't interact with it directly.

Audio Suggestions — A modal that generates AI sound effects or short music cues from a prompt or preset beat.

Account & Credit Terms

Credit — The unit you spend on AI generations. CookFlix charges per generation rather than per seat.

Wallet — Where your credits live. Visible in the navigation bar as Wallet: N cr.

Available Credits — Credits you can use right now (Balance minus Held).

Balance — Total credits in your wallet, including any temporarily held.

Held Credits — Reserved for in-progress generations. Released on failure, captured on success.

Spent MTD — Month-to-date credits spent on successful generations.

Initial Grant — The free credits given to your account on signup.

Stripe Purchase — A credit pack bought through Stripe checkout (currently 2,000 credits per pack).

Generation Debit — A credit transaction recording the charge for a successful generation.

Invoice / Receipt — Documents available in Credit Purchase History after each Stripe purchase.

AI & Technical Terms

Generation — The process of the AI creating something (image, video, text). Each can take seconds to minutes.

Regenerate — Run the AI again to get a different result. Because generation involves randomness, regenerating often gives a noticeably different output.

JSON — A standard data format used to store storyboard information. You'll only encounter it directly if you upload your own storyboard file.