Three phases
Rough cut and captions land in CapCut — fast export, fine on mobile. Runway, Kling, Vidu, and Hailuo enter when I lack B-roll or visual inserts.
Missing shots
Cinematic motion: I still try Runway first. Chinese prompts and face consistency: Kling often wins for talking-head style clips.
Both are credit-based — generate a few samples on each before buying a big pack.
CapCut as finisher
AI clips are usually 4–8 seconds; publishing means stitch, subtitle, grade. CapCut’s auto-caption is good enough for a first pass — I fix names manually.
For long horizontal edits, pro NLEs may fit better; check the AI Video category for Veed, Descript, etc.
Mistakes I made
Mixing too many AI visual styles in one video looks patched together.
Read commercial terms for faces and logos before posting client work.