How to use Piffect.

Start here

There are three ways to make something. They differ only in how much you want Piffect to decide for you.

One image

You write a line, you get a still. Fastest and cheapest. Create an image

One video

The same, but it moves. You choose the engine and the length. Create a video

A campaign

You give a goal. Piffect plans a run of posts and makes all of them. Start a campaign

Your brand kit

Piffect can only put your product in a scene if it has seen your product. This is a five minute job you do once.

1. Add your products

   Photograph each product on a plain background, in good light, from the angle customers recognise. Upload it and give it a name and a short description. Add every product you intend to advertise.

   Add a product

2. Add your logo

   Upload the highest resolution version you have, ideally a PNG with a transparent background. Piffect composites your logo onto finished frames rather than asking a model to draw it, which is why it comes out sharp and correctly spelled instead of approximated.

   Add a logo

3. Attach them when you generate

   In the composer, attach the product and logo you want in the shot. In a campaign you pick a product once and every post in the run uses it.

Making images

At 7 credits a still, this is the cheapest thing in Piffect and the fastest way to find out whether an idea works before you spend video money on it.

1. Open the image composer

   Create an image

2. Say what you want to see, not what you want to feel

   "A cold glass bottle beaded with condensation on a dark walnut counter, morning light from the left" beats "refreshing and premium". Name the object, the surface, the light and the mood, in that order.

3. Attach the product and logo

   Use the attach controls to bring in your kit. Without them you get a generic version of your category.

4. Pick the right shape

   Choose the aspect ratio for wherever it is going. A square crop of a vertical composition loses the top and bottom, so generating the right shape costs less than fixing it later.

Making videos

Every clip starts as a still. Piffect renders a first frame and then animates it, which is why the frame is worth getting right.

Text to video

You describe the shot and Piffect makes both the frame and the motion. Best when you do not have a specific image in mind.

Image to video

You supply the first frame yourself: an image you made in Piffect, a product photo, or anything you upload. Then you describe only the movement. Use this when you already have a still you like, or when a text to video attempt keeps producing the wrong scene. Controlling the frame removes most of the uncertainty, because the model is no longer inventing the setting.

Writing motion

Describe one continuous action with cause and effect, not a mood. "She lifts the bottle, tilts it over the glass, juice pours in a steady arc, the glass fills, she sets the bottle down" gives the model somewhere to go. "Dynamic and energetic" gives it permission to invent, and invented motion is where objects morph and second bottles appear.

Basic, PiFast and PiFastX

Three engines at three prices. They differ in length, in whether anyone can speak, and in how much detail survives.

PiFast and PiFastX render the whole clip in one pass, so nothing cuts and a speaking shot stays in sync. They also cost two frames rather than one, because Piffect sends both a first and a last frame to stop the motion drifting.

Running a campaign

A campaign is a scheduled run of posts. You give the goal, and Piffect researches the market, drafts the calendar, writes the copy and renders every piece.

1. Describe the goal in a sentence

   "Launch our cold pressed juice in Lagos to health conscious professionals" is enough. Specific beats clever.

   Start a campaign

2. Set audience, tone and region

   These steer the writing, not only the look. The options are deliberately broad, so pick the closest one rather than hunting for a perfect match.

3. Choose how much of it moves

   The motion mix decides what fraction of the run is video rather than stills. More video costs more, and the estimate updates as you change it.

4. Check the estimate, then cook

   Piffect shows the arithmetic before you spend anything: how many images, how many videos, and what each one costs. Nothing is charged until you start the run.

5. Watch it fill in

   The plan page shows each post as it finishes. You can stop a run midway, and anything not yet rendered is refunded.

   See your campaigns

Editing and remixing

Nothing you make is final. Every piece can be re-rendered, re-worded or re-cut without starting over.

Edit and regenerate

Change the brief, the engine, the length or the product on an existing piece and run it again. The old version is archived rather than deleted, so you can go back to it.

Remix

Trim a clip, reorder cuts, add an audio track or lay an overlay on top. This is a real timeline editor rather than a filter.

Stop

Anything still rendering can be stopped. It halts at the provider too, not only on your screen, and you are refunded for work that had not started.

Avoiding refusals

Occasionally an engine declines to render a prompt. Here is what actually causes it, measured from every refusal Piffect has recorded rather than guessed at.

Named or recognisable people

This is almost every refusal. Naming a celebrity, athlete, musician, politician or any real person will stop a render, and so will "looks like" or "in the style of" a named person. Describe people by role and appearance instead: a woman in her thirties with locs, a barista with tattooed forearms. You get a better shot as well as a rendered one, because the description is doing real work.

Specific music

Naming a song, an artist or a recognisable style triggers the same protection that covers faces. Ask for a character instead: warm original instrumental, minimal upbeat score.

If it happens anyway

• Read the failure panel. It shows the engine's own words rather than our guess, so it usually names the exact thing it objected to.
• Edit that wording and run it again. A refusal is deterministic, so an identical prompt will be refused identically and retrying unchanged only wastes time.
• Or switch the piece to PiFast or PiFastX. They apply different rules and have not refused a render yet.

Credits and plans

Everything is priced in credits. You start with 250 free, and you are only charged for work that is actually delivered.

A failed render is refunded. A run you stop before it reaches the provider is refunded. Every charge is itemised with the length and the model it paid for, so you can always check the arithmetic.

Still stuck

Every generation keeps a record of what it did. Open any finished piece to see the brief you wrote, the prompt that was rendered from it, and what it cost. If something failed, the failure panel shows the engine's own words rather than our guess at them.