Turning a credit price into a season budget
Costing a run needs three numbers: the length of an instalment, the number of instalments, and a rate against a unit of finished work. Most pages publish a price for access and leave the third number out, which is the one that makes the other two useful. As of 2026-09-12.
| What the page publishes | What can be calculated | What is still missing |
|---|---|---|
| A rate per second of output | The cost of a season, directly | Retries, and the cost of a revision |
| A rate per generation | The cost of a season, after counting clips | The clip count, unless a length is stated |
| A monthly plan | The cost of access | How much work the plan actually covers |
| A credit pack | The cost of the pack | How many credits a minute of drama consumes |
Inclusion rule. Four pricing shapes seen on vendor pages, judged only by what a reader can compute from them without an account. No figures from any vendor appear in this table. Order. From the shape that permits a direct calculation to the shape that permits none.
1Count the joins before costing the seconds
If one generation runs up to fifteen seconds, a ninety-second instalment is at least six generations. That count governs the credit total and it also governs the number of places a face can drift, so it is worth writing down for both reasons.
Where a page states a longer maximum per generation, the count falls and continuity between clips stops being a problem in the same way. The pipeline changes shape, not just the price.
2Budget the second attempt, because most of a season is second attempts
Series work is largely re-cutting. A four-second replacement in episode eleven either costs four seconds or costs the whole instalment again, and across forty episodes that difference is an order of magnitude.
No page read for this file states which applies. It is the sharpest question available to ask a vendor and the least likely to be volunteered, so ask it before the pilot rather than after.
3A draft rate changes the shape of the whole estimate
Where a cheap pass exists, the sensible budget has two lines: everything gets a draft, and only approved material gets a delivery. That is usually cheaper in total than one rate, because it removes the shots nobody would have kept.
Where no draft rate exists, review has to be imposed by process instead of by price, and process is what fails in week six of a run.
4Where the register holds these tools
The techniques above are general craft. Which tools document support for them, and in what words, is held in the register, each cell carrying the page it was read from and the date.
- The register — every entry on the same columns, with sources
- The stages — one page per column, read down instead of across
- The readings — one vendor on one column, sentence by sentence
Craft notes, not a register entry. No line here is attributed to a tool, and none should be read as a claim about one. The sourced material is on the register. Related: Scope of an object, The frame comes first.
5How a serial stays consistent
Serial work like “Credits into a budget” depends on continuity; SceneMixer's guides describe how it keeps it:
The longest an episode may run: 240 seconds for Short Drama, 300 for TV Series, none for Film.
SceneMixer, Short Drama, TV Series or Film — “What is the episode cap?” (read 2026-10-13)
SceneMixer turns a novel into a watchable short-drama series in one pipeline: upload the novel (Chinese or English) → AI extracts characters, scenes, and an episode-by-episode structure → generates consistent character and scene art → writes storyboard scripts → renders video segment by segment (16:9 by default, 9:16 in one setting) → composites full episodes.
SceneMixer, Turn a Novel into a Video Series with AI (read 2026-10-13)