Frequently asked questions

What is Shotline, in one line?

A browser studio for AI-assisted video, for any creator: Build for one-off generations, Grid for wiring shots together on a canvas, Director for shot-by-shot scenes, Signal for cutting the timeline (it is at its strongest on music videos, syncing your shots to a song), and a Library that holds all of it.

What is Early Access, and what do you ask in return?

Right now Shotline is free and invite-only, opened to creators finishing V1 alongside us. In exchange we ask for real feedback (the Report button on any error, or just telling us what feels wrong) and a small credit badge on what you publish. It is an experimental beta: expect rough edges, and expect things to change as we learn from how you actually use it.

Do I need to know anything technical to start?

No. The one thing you do need before you can generate anything is a provider key, which is covered next.

Where do I start? What is "Sandbox"?

Sandbox is the project you land in by default. It always exists and can never be deleted, so a generation you make without picking a project first never lands somewhere you cannot find it. Make a named project whenever you are ready to work on something for real; Sandbox stays your scratch space either way.

Do I pay Shotline?

Not right now. Early Access is free. Shotline itself does not charge you for generations: it routes your request to an AI provider using your own account and your own key, and that provider bills you directly for the compute. Read that sentence twice, it is the one thing that trips people up most: Shotline is the routing tool, not the thing you pay for the image or video itself.

So what do I actually pay for, and to whom?

You pay your AI provider (EvoLink, Kie, AtlasCloud, and a couple of others), directly, on your own account with them, at their prices. Shotline never sees or touches that payment. Think of Shotline as the camera and the provider as the film stock: you buy the film separately.

Which provider should I start with?

Any single key gets you generating; none of them is "the default". The honest trade: fal.ai carries the widest range of models and tends to be the steadiest, while EvoLink and Kie usually win on price. If you only want one key to start, pick by what matters more to you, range or price, and add a second later. Every card in Settings links straight to where you sign up and create the key.

Do I need more than one provider key?

No, but two is where it gets good. EvoLink, Kie, AtlasCloud and fal.ai each have a key slot in Settings, and with more than one stored the studio prices every generation across them and the router can pick the cheaper lane per run.

What does "the router" or "Auto" mean?

Auto is the standing default: for each generation it picks among your own funded, working keys, generally the cheapest lane that carries the model. With one key stored, that key simply always runs. You can also pin a specific provider in the nav if you want every generation to go through one key on purpose; every price in the studio follows whichever you chose.

What is the wallet / "on the keys" thing in the corner?

It is a live read of the balance on each provider key you have stored, so you can see at a glance whether you are about to run out mid-session. It costs nothing to check; it is just a balance lookup, not a spend.

Why does fal.ai say "connected" instead of a dollar amount?

fal only shares your balance with keys created under its ADMIN scope. A normal API-scope key runs generations fine, but fal refuses the balance read, so Shotline shows "connected" instead of inventing a number. Want the dollar figure? Create a new key at fal.ai under Dashboard, Keys with the ADMIN scope and paste that into Settings instead. The trade-off: an ADMIN key can also manage your fal account, so it is a bigger credential to store. Both kinds generate identically.

Why do the utility nodes want a fal.ai key?

The Grid's utility nodes, matte, depth, lipsync, reframe and sound design, run on fal.ai. It carries the widest range of these specialist finishing models and is the steadiest of the providers we route to, which is exactly what you want for a pass you are layering onto footage you already made. The trade is price: fal is usually the most expensive lane, so those nodes cost a bit more than a plain generation. If you plan to lean on them, keep a funded fal key in Settings.

Why do some cost numbers say "about"?

Because providers bill differently. Some charge plain dollars (AtlasCloud, fal.ai); others sell credits (EvoLink, Kie), and credits usually get cheaper the more you buy at once. Shotline always converts credits to dollars at the smallest purchase tier, for example what ten dollars buys, so the estimate is honest for the cautious buyer and pleasantly wrong if you bought a bigger pack. A few providers also report the exact charge after each run; where they do, the number shows plain, and where they do not, it stays an estimate.

What is the spend meter next to it?

Your own rolling 24-hour spend across your keys, shown next to a daily budget you can set yourself in Settings. It is a personal awareness tool, not a hard stop unless you set it as one.

What is the low-balance warning?

A dollar threshold you set in Settings on your EvoLink balance. Cross it and you get a notification (at most once a day), so a generation does not fail mid-session because the tank quietly ran dry.

I got a "such-and-such is out of funds" error. What do I do?

Top up that provider's balance directly on their site (the link is right there in Settings), or switch to a different key you have stored, then try again. Shotline did not charge you for the failed attempt.

What is the difference between Build, Grid, and Director?

Build is the plain one-off generator: pick a model, drop in references, run it. Grid is the canvas where you wire shots, references, and tools together as connected nodes. Director is the shot-by-shot scene surface for building a film out one scene at a time, with camera, lens, and film-stock choices baked in.

What is Signal?

The timeline edit room: it lines your shots up against your song's waveform and lyrics so you can cut the film to the music.

What is Casting?

Your reusable library of characters (Cast), places (Sets), and camera-and-look recipes (Looks), so you build a character or a location once and reuse it across Build, Grid, and Director instead of re-describing it every time.

Why did my generation fail?

A handful of causes cover almost every case: the provider is out of funds, your key was rejected (re-enter it in Settings), you are being rate-limited (wait a few seconds), the model is not enabled on your provider plan, the model's own safety filter blocked the prompt or reference, or the provider is briefly overloaded on their end. The error message on screen tells you which one it was and what to do about it; you were not charged for a failed attempt.

Can I undo a generation, or get my money back if I do not like the result?

There is no charge-back through Shotline (we never touched the charge; the provider did). Most surfaces let you compare candidates before committing and keep the ones you want, so the usual move is to just try again rather than expect a refund.

Is my work labeled as AI-made, and can I use it for professional or commercial projects?

We treat content provenance as a feature, not a burden. Shotline is being built to carry an invisible, verifiable "made with AI" mark (the C2PA / Content Credentials standard) inside your outputs: it changes nothing about how your video looks, adds no visible watermark or badge, and never stops you editing, exporting, or commercially using your work. The point is legitimacy for real work, so that publishing platforms can read the mark and label your content correctly instead of penalizing unlabeled AI. We are introducing this in stages by media type, beginning with images, so not every export carries a mark yet. The disclosure side is already in place (for example, our assistants tell you when you are talking to an AI). Whatever we mark, the labeling duty where you publish stays yours: you are responsible for any AI-content label your platform or country requires, and you agree not to strip the mark out once it is there (see Terms 8.5 and 8.2).

What kinds of things can I actually generate?

Three kinds: image, video, and audio. Most of the image and video models take reference stills, clips, or audio too, so you can hold a face, a location, or a voice steady across shots instead of generating from a blank prompt every time. Some of the video models bake in synced sound, dialogue, effects, ambience, as part of the same run, rather than leaving you to add it after. There is also a set of specialized tools, background removal, lip-sync, upscaling, and a few others, for editing footage you already made rather than generating something new.

Which models are actually available right now?

There's a wide lineup across image, video, and audio, and new ones ship regularly, so treat any list as a snapshot rather than a fixed one. On video that currently includes Kling, Seedance, WAN, and Hailuo. On stills it includes Nano Banana Pro, Seedream, GPT Image 2, and FLUX. For music, sound effects, and voice there is ElevenLabs and Lyria, among others. Open the model picker in Build to see the exact current lineup.

Does the same model always run through the same provider?

No. A lot of the flagship models are wired into more than one provider at once, for example Nano Banana Pro runs on three of them and Kling 3.0 runs on two, so if one provider is down or pricier that day, the same model can still run somewhere else. Auto already picks the cheapest working lane for you, that part is covered elsewhere in this FAQ. The point here is just that having a model available does not tie you to a single provider for it.

What is the Toolbox?

The Toolbox is a set of small tools bundled into Shotline that run entirely in your browser: a model price catalog, a music visualizer called ViZ, an audio mastering tool, an MP3 exporter, a lyric sheet formatter, and a file metadata checker. All of it is free. None of it calls an AI model, touches a provider key, or spends anything, so it works the moment you're in the app, provider key or not.

What can I do in the model catalog?

It's a price and capability comparison across every model Shotline supports: what each one takes as input, what it costs on each provider at the same baseline (five seconds at 720p for video, one image at its floor quality, and so on), and a chart of how that price has moved over time. A plain price is confirmed, either measured from real bills or a provider's published rate. A price marked as an estimate is our best guess. Browsing it is free and needs no provider key, so you can shop before you commit to one.

What is ViZ?

ViZ is a music visualizer: drop in a song and it renders reactive visuals live in your browser as the track plays, with no model call involved. Add a still image and ViZ+ animates that image to the music instead of a generic visual. Everything happens locally, the song and image never leave your browser, and how long a render can run depends on your device's own power.

Can I master and export a track without paying for a model?

Yes. The mastering tool brings a mix up to a release loudness target, with presets for platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music, using a limiter built to protect the low end rather than just flattening every peak, and it runs on your machine: the track is never uploaded. From there the MP3 tool turns a mastered file into something you can send, at a bitrate you choose from 128 to 320 kbps, with tags and cover art carried along. Both are free and need no provider key.

Does the Toolbox help with lyrics or checking a file before I post it?

Yes, two tools cover that. Lyrics takes a Suno-style sheet and reformats it to what DistroKid expects: it never rewrites a word, it flags anything that needs your own judgment call instead, and saved sheets stay in a small library you can reopen later. The file checker reads a file's metadata (camera, software, timestamps, GPS) and, for images and video, whether it carries a Content Credentials (C2PA) mark, all locally in your browser, so you can check your own work before you publish it.

Which nodes are free to use?

A set of nodes run entirely in your browser using WebCodecs and WebGL instead of calling a provider, so they cost nothing and need no spend confirmation: crop, rotate, and resize; extract frame and contact sheet; speed ramp, datamosh, and gif export; the look effects (dither, glitch, gradient map, posterize, ascii, halftone); ViZ and ViZ+, which turn audio or an image into a music-reactive visual; blend, which layers one visual over another; and stitch, which joins clips into one piece. One exception: crop chains a paid upscale step if the cropped region comes out under 1080px on the long edge, so the result is not unusably small. Everything else on the list stays free no matter the size.

What does the Stitch node do?

Stitch joins the clips or audio tracks wired into it end to end into one continuous piece. It follows the order they sit on the canvas, left to right, so you build your cut by arranging shots in space rather than on a timeline. It runs free, client-side, no provider call and no spend, which makes it a natural last node once you're happy with your shots.

Are there limits on the free effects?

Yes. Most of them render live in the browser tab itself, so keep that tab open and in the foreground while a job runs: closing it or switching away mid-render will interrupt it. Speed ramp, datamosh, ViZ, ViZ+, and blend are capped at 30 seconds of clip, and speed ramp and datamosh render video only, so audio gets dropped. Gif export is capped at 12 seconds, and a bigger frame size or higher frame rate makes for a much larger file.

Can I control Shotline from my own AI assistant?

Yes. Shotline runs a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server at shotline.tools/mcp, and any MCP client can connect to it: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and ChatGPT's custom connectors on plans that support a static auth header. Once connected, your assistant is acting on your account with your own credits. Generation is spend-guarded the same way it is in the app, so anything above a small threshold requires an explicit confirmation before it runs.

What can an AI assistant actually do in Shotline over MCP?

It can generate images, video, and audio on your account, browse your assets and projects, and set up new projects and shots. It can also build on a project's Grid board directly: placing nodes, wiring connectors between them, and saving, sharing, or applying reusable node templates. Video and audio generations always need an explicit confirmation before they run, since they spend real credits, and everything it creates lands on your Sandbox project's Grid board rather than a separate MCP-only space.

How do I connect my AI assistant to Shotline?

In Settings, under Connect your AI, generate a connection token. It's shown once, so copy it right away. For Claude Code, run the one-line setup command shown there. For Claude Desktop, paste the provided config block into your config file and restart the app. The endpoint is shotline.tools/mcp either way, and you can mint a separate token per client and revoke any one of them without touching the others.

Can I rent a GPU through Shotline?

Renting a GPU is a Studio Plus feature, so it is turned on per account rather than on by default. On an account that has it, you connect your own Vast.ai account and key in Settings, and Shotline rents a physical GPU on your behalf to render clips a normal provider does not carry. What runs on that machine is Shotline's own render setup, not a general-purpose computer. It is a separate lane from the four regular provider keys.

Do I need my own Vast.ai account to rent a GPU?

Yes. Shotline never rents hardware on your behalf without your own Vast.ai account and key in Settings, the same pattern as a provider key. You fund your own balance directly on Vast.ai, and Shotline can never spend past whatever is sitting in that balance.

When would I rent a GPU instead of using a normal provider key?

Mostly for the handful of models and passes no hosted provider carries yet. Outside of those, a normal provider key is simpler and faster to start: renting a card means waiting several minutes for it to boot before your first clip can render.

Roughly what does renting a GPU cost?

You are billed by Vast.ai, by the minute, on your own account there, not by Shotline. A card runs roughly 70 to 90 cents an hour once it is up. A fresh card also pays a one-time cost to download the model's weight files first, and the estimated cost is shown to you before you start.

Why does spinning up a rented card take several minutes?

A rented card starts with nothing on it, so before it can render it boots, downloads the model's weight files, and warms up. Once nothing is left to render, the card shuts itself down after sitting idle, or you can stop it by hand any time.

What is a "project" here?

A folder: a name, its media, optionally a song, optionally a Grid or Director room. Sandbox is the one you always have; everything else you create as you go.

If I delete a project, is the media gone?

No. Deleting a project (a soft delete) removes it from your workspace but the media itself stays, recoverable, in your account's Assets. The Assets view inside the Library is the only place media is actually and permanently destroyed; everywhere else in the app, deleting is reversible.

What is "Clean up N orphans"?

A render that is no longer referenced anywhere in a project (an old candidate, a replaced take) counts as an orphan. Clean up removes those specific ones and frees the storage they were holding. It only ever touches renders nothing in the document still points at.

What happens when I export or back up a project?

Export downloads a package of the project straight to your device. Deleting a project (outside of Sandbox) saves that package automatically first, so you always have a copy before anything is removed from your workspace; a package can be re-imported at any time.

Can I get everything Shotline has on me?

Yes. Settings has an export that downloads one JSON file with your whole account: profile, projects, boards, Cast and Set libraries, presets, and generation history. It does not embed the media files themselves; use a project's package export in the Library for the actual files.

What happens if I delete my account?

It is permanent and immediate: profile, projects, media, libraries, presets, keys, and history, all erased, with no undo. Export your data first if you want a copy. This is the one deliberate exception to the soft-delete rule everywhere else in the app.

How do I share a project with someone?

From the board's collaborators panel: either mint an invite link or add someone by their handle and pick a role (editor or viewer). Sharing is per-project, and each collaborator generates on their own provider keys, never yours.

Does someone get added the moment I invite them?

No. An invite lands in their notifications as a pending request; they have to accept it before they show up on the roster. Nothing about your board is visible to them until they do.

What is the difference between an editor and a viewer?

An editor can work on the board; a viewer can look but not change anything.

What happens to my work if I leave a board someone else owns?

Your own renders on that board are copied into your Library first, and stay free of your storage quota for 30 days before they start counting against it. You lose access to the board itself and everything else on it once you leave.

What is a "nudge"?

A free courtesy ping to your collaborators pointing at a specific spot on the board (a node in Grid). It never generates anything and never costs you or them anything.

Something broke. What do I do?

Use the Report button that appears on the error. It sends the technical context straight to us. For anything that is not a hard error, or anything you just want to flag, email [email protected]; Aidan and Saera read everything there.

Is my provider key safe?

It is stored encrypted, and once saved, no part of it except the last few characters is ever shown again in the browser. You can remove a stored key at any time, which turns off generation through that provider until you add a new one.

Can I turn on notifications for things happening while I'm away?

Yes, browser push is opt-in in Settings: nudges, board invites, failed generations, and low-balance warnings can ping you at the OS level. The in-app inbox is always the full record either way; push is just an extra ping layered on top.