Fixing things

The single most money-saving idea in pod: an edit recuts what you already shot for free, while a re-shoot generates new footage and always asks you first with a price.

Edits vs re-shoots — the difference that saves money

When a shot bothers you, there are two very different kinds of fix, and pod treats them very differently:

	Edit	Re-shoot
What happens	Pod recuts the film from footage that already exists — trims, reorders, tightens.	Pod generates brand-new footage for the shot.
Cost	Free. No new generation, no credits spent.	Costs credits — and pod always asks first, with a price.
Sounds like	"cut the first 3 seconds", "pacier", "hold the ending longer"	"redo shot 3", "make her actually smile in shot-05"

This matters because most of what feels wrong in a first cut is pacing, not footage. A trim note fixes it in seconds and costs nothing. So before you ask for a re-shoot, ask yourself: is the take fine but the cut wrong? If yes, it's an edit — say it in plain words and pod recuts for free.

Tip: A bare "no" at any gate never spends money. Pod asks what you'd like to change instead of guessing. You can say no all day for free.

Edit notes: recutting for free

At the final screening — gate ten, where pod shows you the assembled film with a shot map and timecodes — you can hand over edit notes exactly the way you'd talk to a human editor:

❯ cut the first 3 seconds of shot-02, and make the whole middle pacier
Edit notes — recutting from existing takes (free)…
  (no new footage is generated; nothing is charged)

The shot map's timecodes make notes easy to aim: you can see exactly which shot holds 0:41–0:53 and name it. After delivery, the same power lives in one command — from inside the studio, just type it (no "pod" prefix needed there):

❯ edit basti-teaser "tighten the temple scene, breathe more on the last shot"
Recutting basti-teaser from existing takes… done. New cut in 07-final/.

Because edits reuse takes you already paid for, you can iterate on the cut as many times as you like without touching your balance.

Re-shoots: redo a shot, or a whole film

When the footage itself is wrong — wrong action, wrong mood, wrong length — that's a re-shoot. The redo command handles both a single shot and a whole episode:

❯ redo basti-teaser --shot shot-03
Re-shooting shot-03 will cost ~140 credits. Go ahead? (y/N)
❯ y

You can also re-spec while you're at it — redo basti-teaser --duration 60 re-produces the film to a new length. Either way, the rule holds: pod shows the price and waits for your yes before anything renders. Nothing is ever regenerated silently.

When asking for a re-shoot, the best phrasing names the shot and asks for one change: "shot-07: make it a close-up" beats a paragraph of maybes. See talking about changes and camera language for the vocabulary the crew understands precisely.

Browsing takes

Every shot may have more than one take behind it — drafts, retries, alternates. Before paying for a new one, look at what already exists:

❯ takes basti-teaser
shot-01: 2 takes · shot-02: 1 take · shot-03: 3 takes …

Often the take you want was already shot — swapping to it is an edit, not a re-shoot. Free.

fixclip: targeted surgery

For one stubborn clip that needs focused attention — not a full re-shoot of the plan, just this clip — there's fixclip:

❯ fixclip basti-teaser --shot shot-05

It's the scalpel next to redo's saw: aimed at exactly one shot, leaving the rest of the film untouched.

Fix rounds at the final screening

At the screening, pod's continuity checks and your own eyes may surface a list of issues. You don't have to fix everything. You can scope the round in plain words:

"just the critical" — fix only the serious issues, ship the rest as-is.
"only shot-02" — one shot gets attention; everything else is accepted.

Note: Choosing to fix some issues means accepting the rest — pod won't relitigate them next round. This is deliberate: it keeps fix rounds converging toward a finished film instead of circling forever. If you later change your mind about something you waved through, you can still come back with edit, redo, or fixclip after delivery.

Dubbing instead of re-shooting

If the picture is right but the sound is wrong — a line reading you don't love, or you've since recorded the real actor — don't re-shoot. Dub:

❯ dub basti-teaser --shot shot-03 --audio my-recording.mp3
Swapping shot-03's audio and re-stitching the film… done.

The clip keeps its (already paid for) picture; only the audio changes, and pod re-stitches the finished film around it. This is the house workflow for dialogue: ship with performed dialogue first, watch it, then dub any shot with a real recording. Related tools: vo regenerates the voice-over, and localize makes a dubbed version of a whole finished film in another language — see using your own media.

The money rules, in one place

Edit notes and recuts: free, always.
Re-shoots: priced and confirmed before anything renders.
Drafts absorb the iteration: every clip is first shot as a cheap 480p draft, and the full-resolution master renders once per shot — see money & credits.
If pod is interrupted mid-render, it remembers paid work and never pays twice for the same take — just resume.

Full syntax for every command on this page lives in the commands reference; what happens at each stop along the way is on the gates.

One shot, a different engine

In steer, you can switch the AI engine for a single shot without touching the rest of the film. At the keyframes or clips gate, or in a redo, just say it:

❯ shot-05: use omni
[showrunner] shot-05 switches to gemini-omni-video. the other shots stay put ✓

Loose names work (omni, kling, seedance). pod re-renders that one shot on the new engine and shows you the price first, like any re-shoot.

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