Best practices for AI video

Member lesson

Planning cost per finished second

Lesson 7 of 10 in Best practices for AI video.

Checked against the makers' documentation on 25 September 2026.

Ray3 Walkthrough - Draft Mode · Luma
Lesson

The formula for a finished second, price per second times forced length times tries, divided by the seconds you keep, is worked through in What a finished second costs. This lesson is about the one number in it you have to find yourself. Tries decide the quote, and no maker we read publishes them. Google, Runway, Luma and Kling document prices, lengths and refusals, and none of them gives a hit rate, and we have not made enough films to publish ours.

lite 720p 4 s · $0.20 · 36 sfast 720p 4 s · $0.40 · 48 sstandard 720p 4 s · $1.60 · 47 sfast 1080p 8 s · $0.96 · 92 sa 15-second ad$13.60 · $0.91 a second20 lite drafts $4.00 + 10 fast finals $9.60your own ledger is the only hit rate that counts
From price to finished second: four rungs of the ladder measured on 25 September 2026, Lite 720p four seconds twenty cents in 36 seconds, Fast forty cents in 48, Standard a dollar sixty in 47, Fast 1080p eight seconds ninety-six cents in 92; a fifteen-second ad with twenty Lite drafts and ten Fast finals cost thirteen dollars sixty.
An ink drawing of a kitchen balance with one small reel of film on one pan and a heap of cut-off film ends on the other, the beam level.
Each kept second carries the weight of every take you threw away.
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Check what stuck

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Members answer these 3 questions and keep the ticket for this lesson. Every lesson has one.

  1. Question 1, locked

    Which of these words means this? “A second of generated video that survives into the locked edit.”

    • Finished second
    • Stop rule
    • Snapshot
    • Settings ladder
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Kept takes divided by all takes, for one kind of shot on one model. Measured by you, never borrowed.”

    • SynthID
    • control_after_generate
    • Dated copy
    • Hit rate
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Finding a shot on a cheap tier and rendering the winner on a better one.”

    • Scrub
    • Positive phrasing
    • Flicker
    • Draft ladder

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