Credits pay for the AI generation work behind your videos — images, animation, and voiceover. Not everything costs credits, and the price of the things that do can vary a lot depending on the choices you make. Here's how to get the most out of your balance.

What costs credits

These cost credits:

• Generating or regenerating a shot's image

• Animating a still image into video

• Generating or regenerating voiceover

These don't:

• Reusing an already-animated clip, or an uploaded image/video, for a shot

• Adding background music from the library, or your own uploaded audio

• Auto-shorten (trimming a clip to its best moment)

• Exporting or re-exporting your video

Export as many times as you want, and use auto-shorten freely — neither one touches your balance.

Choose Image First if you want to review before you spend on animation

When you create (or edit) a project, the Mode menu next to the model picker lets you choose between two ways of generating shots:

• Auto-Animate — every shot gets animated automatically as it's generated.

• Image First — shots start as stills; you animate whenever you want.

Animation typically costs several times more than a still image for that same shot. With Auto-Animate, you pay that animation cost immediately for every shot — including ones you might later cut, reorder, or regenerate. With Image First, you only pay for the image up front, then review your shots as stills and animate just the ones that make the final cut, one at a time or all at once when you're ready.

If you're still shaping a project, or expect to cut shots, Image First avoids paying to animate work you might not keep. Auto-Animate is convenient when you're confident in the shot list and want the full video ready in one pass.

Pick the right model for the job

Every image and animation model has a different credit cost, shown right in the model picker before you generate. The spread is bigger than people expect:

• Images range roughly 1 credit (faster, lighter models) up to 8 credits for the most premium option — an 8x difference for a single image.

• Animation is billed per second of clip, and ranges from about 2 credits/sec on the low end to 20 credits/sec on the high end — a 10x difference.

Reach for a "Fast" tier model for drafts, iteration, and shots where quality differences won't be noticeable, and save the premium "Best" tier models for the shots that matter most in your final cut. You don't have to commit to one model for the whole project — mix and match shot by shot.

Reuse existing media instead of regenerating

If a shot doesn't need a brand-new AI-generated image or animation, you don't have to pay for one. You can drop in an already-animated clip from your project, or upload your own image or video straight into a shot — both are free. This is the easiest way to cut costs on shots that don't need custom visuals: b-roll, generic backgrounds, or footage you already have.

Add your own audio for free

Adding a track from the built-in music library, or uploading your own audio file, doesn't cost credits — only generating voiceover does. If you already have narration or a soundtrack recorded, uploading it instead of generating it in-app saves your balance entirely.

Reanimate one shot at a time to use your free allowance

You get up to 10 free reanimations a day. To make the most of it:

• Reanimate shots individually, not through "animate all shots" — bulk/group animation doesn't draw from the free allowance.

• Keep the same animation model when reanimating a shot — switching models on a reanimation also skips the free tier.

If you're iterating on a specific shot's motion, redo just that shot rather than re-running the whole batch. This free allowance is a shared pool, not per-editor — so any reanimations you do elsewhere in Hypernatural count against the same budget.

Batch your narration

Voiceover is billed in 30-second blocks, with a 30-second minimum — a 5-second line costs the same as a 30-second one. Batch your narration into fewer, longer takes rather than many short separate generations, each of which rounds up to a full 30-second charge on its own.

Failed generations are refunded automatically

If a generation fails, you don't need to do anything — credits are refunded to your balance automatically once the failure is detected. This happens on its own; there's no manual refund request needed.

Quick checklist

• Use Image First mode to review shots as stills before spending on animation, especially early in a project

• Reuse already-animated clips or uploaded images/videos for shots that don't need custom generation

• Use the music library or upload your own audio instead of generating voiceover you don't need

• Choose "Fast" tier models for drafts, "Best" tier for final hero shots

• Let a generation finish (or fail) rather than cancelling it partway through

• Reanimate shots individually to use your free reanimation allowance

• Batch voiceover into fewer, longer takes instead of many short ones