My AI video toolchain: four steps, three tools, in the order that works

The tool list is short. What took me months to get right was the ordering. Here is the chain I run on a shoot day, step by step, with the one job each tool is there for.

Step 1: storyboard in a text file, not in a tool

Six lines, one per shot: subject, framing, light, duration.

hands opening a box, close-up, warm rim light, 4s
product on stone surface, medium, soft window light, 3s
...

No tool touches this step. It is also the step that decides whether everything after it is fast or slow — every one of the tools below produces better output from a concrete shot description than from a mood word.

Step 2: one-beat shots with Wan 3.0

Wan 3.0 does text-to-video and image-to-video with motion presets. It is the first tool in the chain because it covers the shots that do not need continuity: a push-in on hands, a slow reveal of a product, a background plate.

Two habits that matter:

• Pick the motion preset before editing the prompt. A slow push-in and a handheld drift read completely differently, and the preset is the control that actually changes the feel.
• Re-roll instead of editing. The shot is short; regenerating costs less than fiddling.

Step 3: the sequence — cut, caption, dub — in Pavo AI

Pavo AI is where the project becomes a video. Generation, timeline editing, captions and multilingual dubbing share one workspace, which removed the export/import dance I used to do between three tools.

The order inside this step matters as much as the step itself:

1. Drop every shot on one timeline — 9:16 master.
2. Cut to the storyboard rhythm. This is where you find out two shots are missing.
3. Character consistency: lock the reference frame once and reuse it for every generated shot. That single constraint removed most of my rework — without it, shot three drifts from shot one and you end up regenerating the sequence.
4. Captions next, because they change where the eye lands.
5. Dub last. Dubbing before the cut is locked means re-dubbing every trim.
6. Export 16:9 from the same timeline for the landing page.

Prompt examples for the locked-reference approach: pavoai.app/prompts.

Step 4: match an existing reference with Rea Video

Sometimes a shot has to look like something that already exists — a competitor's ad, a client's old spot, a still the client loves. Generating from a description is the wrong move here; you want recreation.

Rea Video is reference-driven: give it the clip, describe the new subject, and it re-shoots the scene. Describe only the subject change — if you also describe staging, you are asking it to invent, and it drifts.

Why the order matters more than the tools

• Generating before the storyboard wastes credits on shots you will cut.
• Dubbing before the cut is locked wastes a whole pass.
• Re-shooting something a preset could have generated wastes time.
• Skipping the character reference lock guarantees a regeneration round.

The chain, one table

Chain links: wan-3.io · pavoai.app · reavideo.pro