UGC video ad, end to end

A UGC ad is a talking take intercut with product b-roll, captioned, under thirty seconds. Advibly builds it from six calls, and the order matters: captions go on the finished cut, not on the pieces.

Open a project

advibly_create_project {
  brand_id,
  name: "Hydrating serum UGC ad",
  context: "Grouping the talking take, product b-roll, and final cut of the requested UGC video ad into one project."
}
  → project_id

Every call below carries this project_id. Without it the user's library shows six loose files instead of one ad. Free.

Cast the actor

advibly_list_actors {
  gender: "Female",
  age_range: "30-40",
  style: "Casual",
  context: "Finding a suitable talking-head actor to deliver the requested UGC script for the brand's target audience."
}
  → actor_id, image_url, preview_url

Stock actors speak in their own cloned voice, and the user's custom actors speak with the voice assigned when they were created. Either way there is no voice argument at generation time.

Show the user the image_url and preview_url before shooting. Recasting after the take is a second charge.

Write the script

The highest-leverage step on this page. Everything downstream renders whatever you write here.

One talking clip is a hook. A finished ad is five beats, and each has a job:

Under thirty seconds, that is twenty to forty spoken words:

"I stopped buying serums after the third one pilled under my makeup. This one doesn't. Three weeks, no flaking, and my foundation still sits flat. Link's in the bio."

Three rules decide whether it reads as a person or as an ad:

• One idea per clip. Three claims is three clips, which is what the five-beat structure is for.
• Read it aloud before rendering. Anything you stumble over reads as copy; anything you can say naturally reads as a person.
• Write spoken words only. Bracketed emotion tags such as [excited] are read aloud literally by the talking-actor engine.

Show the script to the user before you render it. This is the cheapest moment to change the ad.

Shoot the take

advibly_generate_talking_video {
  brand_id,
  project_id,
  actor_id,
  actor_source: "stock",
  script: "...",
  resolution: "720p",
  context: "Rendering the talking-actor take that delivers the approved UGC script for the brand's vertical video ad."
}

Cost scales with the final audio length, not the resolution, so a script trimmed by a third costs a third less. Lipsync usually runs past the tool's ten-second wait, so expect status: pending and a generation_id.

Shoot the b-roll

Two or three product cutaways, four to six seconds each, in the same aspect ratio as the take.

advibly_generate_video {
  brand_id,
  project_id,
  product_id,                 // store brands: becomes the opening frame
  prompt: "Slow push-in on the bottle as a hand lifts it off the marble
    counter, morning light, shallow depth of field.",
  aspect_ratio: "9:16",
  duration: 5,
  context: "Rendering a product cutaway to intercut with the talking take in the requested UGC video ad."
}

Describe motion, not the product, when you give a start frame. The frame already establishes what the thing looks like; the prompt's job is camera and action.

On a store brand product_id supplies the opening frame for free. Otherwise pass a still you generated as start_image_url.

Cut it together

advibly_render_composition {
  brand_id,
  project_id,
  scenes: [
    { source: talkingGenerationId, trim_end_seconds: 6 },
    { source: brollGenerationId, volume: 0.2 },
    { source: talkingGenerationId, trim_start_seconds: 6 }
  ],
  music: musicGenerationId?,
  context: "Assembling the approved take and product cutaways into the finished vertical UGC ad for the brand."
}

Flat 0.4 credits per render, roughly one to three minutes. The result is saved as a new video generation and as an editable composition; hand the user the edit_url that comes back so they can fine-tune it in the visual editor.

• trim_start_seconds / trim_end_seconds are how you cut away to b-roll and back without re-rendering the take.
• volume: 0.2 tucks a cutaway's own audio under the narration.
• Leave music_volume unset. The renderer already ducks the bed while anyone is speaking, and setting a low value here double-dips into silence.
• For a plain sequence of hard cuts with no audio or text work, advibly_stitch_videos does the same merge for free.

Caption the finished cut

advibly_add_subtitles {
  brand_id,
  project_id,
  video: finalGenerationId,
  preset: "glide",
  context: "Burning animated captions into the finished UGC ad so it reads correctly with sound off on social feeds."
}

Subtitles are billed per started minute, minimum one minute. Captioning the take and the b-roll separately pays that minimum twice and still leaves the cut uncaptioned, so caption once, at the end.

Dynamic presets (glide, fusion, backdrop, whisper and the rest) are 0.4 credits/min and animated; basic presets (simple, corpo, beans …) are 0.2 and static. For a social ad, a dynamic preset usually wins. The style sheet shows every one of them - look at it, or show it to the user, before choosing.

If the brand or product name gets misheard, pass vocabulary:

vocabulary: [{ word: "Advibly", replaces: ["ad vibe lee", "advibley"] }]

Set the cover

advibly_update_project {
  project_id,
  cover_generation_id: subtitledGenerationId,
  context: "Setting the captioned final cut as the project cover so the finished ad is what the user sees in their library."
}

The ad is done when the library shows the captioned cut, not shot two.

Next

• Publish it: Schedule a week of posts.
• Have an agent run the whole recipe: the ugc-ads skill.