The ultimate guide

A single sequential walkthrough that takes you from "I just signed in" to "my first published video, on YouTube, that I'd actually be proud of". This is the long-form companion to Quick start, the one to read once when you want the whole shape laid out end-to-end.

Before you start

Three things help make the first video land well, none are strictly required but each saves time:

A YouTube channel you'd publish to. CueTheScene publishes directly via OAuth; having the channel ready means you can ship in one click instead of downloading and uploading by hand. Connect it from Settings → Integrations any time before render finishes.

A topic you've thought about for more than ten minutes. The brief is the biggest lever on script quality. You don't have to have an angle yet (the brief-form coach helps with that), but a topic you've been turning over in your head produces a sharper script than one you came up with in the last minute.

A baseline cadence target. If you're publishing daily, that shapes everything (length 8 to 12 min, format Documentary, brief-form efficiency matters more than per-video polish). If you're publishing weekly, you can afford the deeper editor passes. Decide before you start; you can change later.

Step 1: pick the plan

The plan choice matters because credit allowance is the only material variable between plans (concurrency too, but it's secondary at low volumes). See Plans and pricing for the breakdown.

If you're publishing 4 videos a month at 12 minutes each, Starter (2,800 credits) covers exactly that. If you're aiming for 12 a month, Creator (8,400). If daily, Pro (25,900). Scale is multi-channel territory.

Founding-member pricing (30 percent off for life, first 100 subscribers) is offered automatically at sign-up if slots remain. The badge surfaces on the dashboard once assigned.

Step 2: write the brief

The brief is one to three sentences. Three pillars: topic + angle, tone, constraints. See Brief writing strategy for the deep dive; the short version:

• Topic + angle. Not "the moon landing" but "the moon landing from Mission Control's perspective, focusing on the 22-minute window between lunar descent and touchdown when nobody on the ground knew if they'd land safely."
• Tone. "Sober documentary, slightly journalistic, in the BBC4 register." Two or three adjectives plus a specific reference point.
• Constraints. "Don't speculate about the astronauts' personal feelings; focus on the operational story." Optional but useful.

If you draw a blank, the brief form has a "Help me write this" coach with worked examples per niche, step-by-step builders, and a "polish what I've written" button. Use it.

Step 3: pick format, length, niche

The four options that shape the rest:

• Format: Documentary (the default, narrative arc) or Listicle (ranked items). See Format and length.
• Length: 8, 12, 20, or 30 minutes. 12 is the workhorse for established channels; 8 is the sweet spot for new ones.
• Niche: 31 niches. Pick the closest match; the pipeline still produces a good video if nothing's a perfect fit, but the niche-specific lifts (prompting fragments, footage routing, voice bias) only fire on niche-matching jobs. See Niche selection.
• Voice: the picker recommends voices for your niche + tone. Listen to a few before picking. The recommended-tier picks usually nail it.

The brief form's right rail shows a live "What you'll get" preview as you fill in. The credit cost shows before you click submit. No hidden charges.

Step 4: wait, but not idly

Submit. The job moves through 12 statuses: draft → outlining → outlined → scripting → scripted → critiquing → paused_for_review (only if a gate fires) → rendering → rendered → published. Total time, 15 to 25 minutes for a typical 12-minute video.

You don't have to keep the tab open. Emails fire on each major stage transition (configurable in Settings → Notifications). Most people close the tab and come back when the render-complete email lands.

If you'd rather watch, the dashboard live-updates without a refresh and the rotating "behind the scenes" flavour copy on the job-status page tells you what the pipeline is actually doing at each moment.

Step 5: step in at the natural moments

If you want to shape the video by hand, the four natural points are:

• Brief. Tune before submit; it's the highest-leverage moment.
• Post-outline. Outline regen with a hint is cheap and changes the whole shape. Dry-run mode (outline-only, 10 credits) is the cheapest place to iterate.
• Post-footage. Per-scene swap, per-scene regenerate, search-more with the source-tier toggle (All / Archival / Free stock / Pixabay). See Editing your video.
• Pre-publish. Title, description, thumbnail. The AI's first picks are good; tuning takes two minutes and is worth doing.

If you don't step in at all, the pipeline produces a publishable video. Most creators step in at brief + pre-publish, occasionally at post-outline for important videos.

Step 6: the publish surface

The render lands. The publish surface shows:

• The MP4 preview (browser-native, no download needed).
• Title, description, tags, thumbnail (three Gemini candidates).
• YouTube category + visibility (Public / Unlisted / Private).
• Schedule (publish now or pick a future time).
• Best-time-to-publish suggestion based on your niche's audience patterns.

The title-CTR predictor band shows whether your draft title looks weak / okay / strong, with one-click "fix this signal" affordances when something hurts CTR. The YouTube-style description preview shows what your description looks like under the video on the YouTube watch page.

When you're ready, "Publish to YouTube" pushes it through OAuth. The job lands at published status. The dashboard's marquee shows your latest published video proudly across the top of the page.

Step 7: the next one

Cadence is what makes a channel. The dashboard's editorial guidance banner surfaces nudges based on your recent publishing pattern, see Cadence for the rationale.

The "While you wait, start another" CTA card surfaces after your first video clears stage 3. Multiple jobs in parallel up to your plan's concurrency limit (1 Starter, 2 Creator, 3 Pro, 5 Scale).

For the second video, you'll go faster. By the fifth, the brief-form choices feel automatic. By the twentieth, you've got a feel for which niches + tones produce videos that perform on your channel.

When something looks wrong

The dashboard surfaces "Paused for review" pills when a quality gate triggers (brief validator / footage availability under 70 percent / VO anomaly / content policy). The chooser panel walks you through the options.

"Failed" pills surface with a category and an action button (usually "Retry job"). Most failures are transient API rate-limits and resolve on retry.

If something stays stuck for more than 15 minutes, drop the job ID to hello@cuethescene.com. See Rendering and troubleshooting for the diagnostic ladder.

What's next

Prompting in depth is the advanced brief-writing playbook.

Building profitable channels covers using CueTheScene as a business, niche selection for monetisation, cadence economics, multi-channel operations.

Niche examples walks through 6 worked examples showing brief → outline → key script moments → footage choices for different niches.

Cheers,
Carl