Tips & Best Practices

These tips will help you get the most out of CookFlix at every stage of the process — and keep credit usage in check.

Writing a Great Business Brief

Your business brief is the single most important input in the entire workflow. Everything downstream — genres, loglines, screenplays, and visuals — is shaped by what you write here. A few minutes spent on a good brief saves hours (and credits) on regeneration later.

Include these details:

  • What your product or service is, in plain terms.
  • Who your target customer is (age, interests, pain points).
  • What makes you different from competitors.
  • The tone you want (funny, heartfelt, bold, minimal, etc.).
  • Specific scenarios, settings, or themes you want the ad to explore.
  • Things to avoid (sensitive topics, specific imagery, competitor references).

Weak brief:

"We sell shoes. Make a cool ad."

Strong brief:

"GreenStep is a direct-to-consumer sneaker brand making running shoes from 100% recycled ocean plastic. Our target audience is environmentally conscious millennials (25–35) who run 3–4 times a week. Our key differentiator is that every pair removes 1 kg of plastic from the ocean. We want the ad to feel aspirational and energetic — showing real runners in urban environments — but grounded in the environmental mission. Avoid greenwashing clichés. The ad should feel modern, not preachy."

Using Brand Assets Effectively

  • Upload a logo and 2–3 product images before the AI starts generating. The system uses them as visual references when creating shots, so your real product can show up in the ad.
  • Write good descriptions (20+ characters) for non-logo assets. The model relies on them to decide when to place each asset.
  • Use @Brand… tags in shot prompts to explicitly ask for a brand asset to appear in a frame.

Choosing Genres

  • Select 2–4 genres for a good balance. One can feel too narrow; more than four can produce an overwhelming number of loglines.
  • Don't be afraid of surprising picks — a "comedic" genre for a serious product can produce unexpectedly effective ads.
  • If recommendations don't feel right, click Regenerate to get a fresh set.

Selecting Loglines

  • Read the concept summary, not just the one-line logline. The summary gives a clearer picture of the final ad.
  • Pay attention to tone tags and estimated duration. A 60-second comedic spot and a 30-second emotional spot are very different productions.
  • Start with 1–2 loglines. You can always come back and generate more.

Choosing the Right Production Mode

  • Agentic, Parallel is the right default for most teams — fastest end-to-end runtime with continuity built in.
  • Agentic, Sequential is better when you want the system to weigh continuity between phases more carefully.
  • Manual gives you per-shot control. Use it when you have a strong creative vision or want to iterate on a specific shot.

Picking an Aspect Ratio and Visual Style

  • 16:9 for YouTube, websites, widescreen displays. 9:16 for Shorts, Reels, TikTok.
  • Photorealistic is the safest default for product ads.
  • Animated 3D and Cartoon work well for friendly explainers and B2C consumer spots.
  • Sketch suits storyboard-style or pre-launch teasers.
  • The visual style is applied project-wide — every image and video uses it. If you're undecided, generate one shot first to validate the look before doing the full run.

Getting Better Character Images

  • Regenerate if a character doesn't look right — natural variation often produces a better second attempt.
  • Use Skip for characters who don't need visuals (off-screen narrators, voice-over).
  • Save recurring characters to your Library so you can @mention them across campaigns.

Getting Better Location Images

  • Locations set the visual tone for shots. If a location feels generic, regenerating often gives a more distinctive result.
  • The AI groups similar scene labels automatically (e.g., "Kitchen - Morning" + "Kitchen - Night" → one "Kitchen"). This is normal and saves duplicate generations.

Getting Better Shot Videos

  • Edit the video prompt before generating. The auto-prompt is a starting point; adding lighting, camera movement, or mood usually improves the result.
  • Use the Director's Chair to add camera direction in plain language (e.g., "slow push-in toward her face") — it rewrites the prompt for you.
  • Generate the start frame first, review it, and only then generate the video. If the start frame is wrong, the video will be too.
  • Use Start-End to Video mode when you want precise control over how a shot begins and ends.
  • Use Image to Video mode when you want the AI to have more creative freedom.
  • Upload custom reference images for shots that need a specific look — product photos, mood-board images, packaging.
  • Use @mentions to keep characters and locations consistent across shots.

Video Editor Tips

  • The timeline auto-populates with your generated clips in screenplay order. Review the arrangement before changing it — the AI-generated order usually makes narrative sense.
  • Layer your audio. Background music on one track, sound effects on another. Volume balancing becomes much easier.
  • Use AI Audio Suggestions to fill in mood and ambience instead of digging through stock libraries.
  • Don't over-edit. Clips are designed to flow together based on the screenplay.
  • Export a draft early. Watch the full video as a rough cut, note what needs changing, then make targeted edits.

Managing Credits

  • Watch held credits during agentic runs — they release if generation fails, but a stuck run keeps them tied up. Cancel and restart if a run looks frozen.
  • Re-do with "Continue with existing assets" instead of "Restart from scratch" when you only need a few fixes — you'll keep the assets you've already paid for.
  • Use the Library to avoid regenerating recurring characters and locations across projects.

General Advice

  • The AI improves with detail. At every step — briefs, prompts, descriptions — more specific input produces better output.
  • Regeneration is fast. Don't settle for "good enough" when a regeneration might give you something great.
  • Save your best storyboard JSON. A storyboard you love can be re-uploaded later to regenerate visuals with a different visual style.
  • Work in passes. Generate all characters first, then all locations, then shots. Batching is more efficient than perfecting each shot one at a time.