Sora AI is OpenAI's latest text-to-video tool that lets you create vibrant videos just by typing out simple text prompts. Right now, it's mostly available outside the EU due to legal restrictions. It makes video creation super easy and also lets you remix content, ensuring responsible use with guidelines and watermarks. It’s a big step forward for everyday users in AI!

Even though text-to-video tools are everywhere, OpenAI’s Sora has better GPT models. It uses a diffusion model combined with a transformer. The quality of the video and the smooth output show that Sora AI has a lot to offer. 

This tutorial introduces you to Sora AI's intuitive and easy-to-use interface. It will teach you how to write effective prompts to create videos, use settings for maximum output, and organize your videos in folders. You’ll be able to study prompts from other videos and use them to create a masterpiece of your own. 

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

• Create a video using a prompt.
• Adjust the prompt to generate the intended video.
• Sort your videos into folders.
• Apply filters to locate your videos.
• Recut, remix, blend, and loop your video.

Tools you’ll need:

• A ChatGPT Plus or Pro subscription

Let’s get started, shall we? 

Use a prompt to create a video

Let’s start by creating a video using a text prompt. This is the basic task in any generative AI tool. Once we learn what it can do, we can explore further by tweaking the settings to create a better video. 

Access Sora AI and find the text prompt box at the bottom of the page. 

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Important to know: You can copy the prompts from the videos in Recents or Featured. Modify it to create your own video. You can also edit the videos on Sora AI and create something using them as inspiration.

Write a prompt for a video. Leave the settings as they are. Once we create the first video, we will learn how to tweak the settings to make a better one. Use the following prompt. Click the up arrow to create the video. 

Prompt:

A middle-aged explorer finds the lost city of gold. His face is lit with excitement and wonder. The camera angle faces south, and the city glistens in the sun. The atmosphere is calm, with large birds flying in the sky. The sky is clear, with a few clouds here and there. 

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Sora will start generating the video. It will take a minute for the process to complete. 

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Once the video is ready, you can click the notification at the top right corner of the page. 

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The video turned out okay. But not as good as I wanted it to be. Let’s tweak some settings and edit our prompt to recreate this video. 

There are quite a few settings in the prompt box. You can upload an image or a video to help Sora imagine the video you want to create. Let’s upload a photo of a city of gold. 

Click the ‘+’ button at the bottom left corner of the prompt box. Select ‘Upload image or video.’

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Upload the image and edit the prompt to ensure it creates something better. 

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Let’s edit the prompt we used for the first video. Copy the prompt and put it in the prompt box. 

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Prompt:

A middle-aged explorer, rugged and weathered by years of adventure, stands on a high vantage point overlooking a stunning, ancient city of gold. The city shimmers brilliantly in the sunlight, its golden structures reflecting the light in a mesmerizing way. The camera angle is set facing north, capturing the vastness of the city from a distance. The explorer’s eyes widen in awe and wonder, his expression one of disbelief and triumph. The surrounding atmosphere is peaceful, with large, majestic birds soaring gracefully across a cloud-speckled sky. The air is crisp, and the scene is bathed in the warm glow of the setting sun, casting a soft, golden hue over the entire landscape. The serenity of the moment contrasts with the excitement brewing inside the explorer as he takes in the sight of the lost city before him.

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It’s not what I thought. But it’s not bad either. Let’s see if we can tweak some settings to make it look better.

Adjust the prompt to generate the intended video.

Let’s explore the other settings and see if we can generate a better video. 

Apart from the image/video upload feature, there are:

• Presets - These are like ready-made settings for specific styles or themes. You can pick a preset that matches the vibe you want (cinematic, retro, or futuristic), so you don’t have to adjust everything from scratch.
• Aspect ratio - This controls the shape of your image or video. Common options are 16:9 for widescreen (like YouTube videos), 4:3 for older TV screens, or 1:1 for square images (great for Instagram). You pick the one that fits where you’re going to use it.
• Resolution - This is about how clear or detailed your image or video looks. Higher resolutions (like 4K) make your visuals super sharp, but they can take longer to render. Lower resolutions are quicker but might not look as detailed.
• Duration - This sets how long your content will be for videos or animations. You can make short loops or longer videos, depending on what you're creating.
• Variations—This setting lets you generate different versions of the same idea. For example, you have several options if you want to try out different styles or colors.

We will tweak these settings for the following prompt and see what we can get. 

For this example, we’ll use the ‘Film Noir’ preset and leave the resolution to 16:9. The resolution is 720p because Sora is not letting us choose 1080p for now. Duration is 5 seconds because Sora has blacked out all the other options due to the heavy load on their servers. You can select 10, 15, or 20 seconds, depending on the length of your video for the prompt. 

Prompt:

A serene pond scene with a mother duck leading her three fluffy ducklings across the water. The pond is bordered by lush green lily pads, some blooming with pink and white flowers. The sun casts a warm glow, creating gentle ripples as the duck family paddles through the calm water. The ducklings mimic their mother's movements, following closely in a line. The atmosphere is peaceful and idyllic, a perfect representation of nature's gentle teaching moments. The ducklings wobble and splash as they try to mimic their mother's swimming.

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That came out amazing. The Film Noir preset gave us a black-and-white video. Notice the camcorder LCD icons. It’s not bad, but I wish it had been longer. 

Important to note: The prompt box has a storyboard feature that allows you to control the length of the video and create a short clip. This exciting feature uses Sora’s most advanced LLM model. We will cover the storyboard in a separate tutorial. 

Sort your videos into folders

You can organize your videos in a separate folder. The clips you generated are in the ‘All videos’ folder. Below that, there’s an option to create a new folder. Click it and name your folder. 

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You can rename or delete the folder by clicking the ellipsis (...) button beside the folder name. 

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Go to the ‘All videos’ folder and click the ellipsis (...) button at the top right corner of the generated clip. Go to ‘Add to folder’ and select the folder to which you want to transfer your clips. 

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Next is the Favorites. You can view all the videos you clicked favorite in this folder. You can only favorite your own clips and videos for now. 

Apply filters to locate your videos

You can use filters to find the videos in the ‘All videos’ folder or the folders you create to save your videos. Click the funnel icon at the top of the page. Click to apply filters to find the videos you were looking for. 

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You have 1000 credits in the plus version. That’s enough to create at least 45 videos. So, you’ll need this filter setting to find the desired ones. 

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Recut, remix, blend, and loop your video

Like any video editor, Sora offers an array of editing tools that help you create a masterpiece. 

Recut: Think of Recut like editing a video. You can take an existing video or animation, cut out unnecessary parts, and rearrange the scenes as you please. It’s perfect for trimming down a video or changing the order of things to make it just right.

Remixing is like giving a piece of content a makeover. You can change the style, add effects, or even change the visuals of an existing video or animation. It lets you take something familiar and give it a fresh twist.

Blend: lets you mix different pieces of content together. For example, you can combine different videos or images to create something new. It’s a great way to merge styles, themes, or visuals into one seamless creation.

Loop makes a video or animation play over and over again. It’s helpful if you want your content to repeat itself smoothly, like a GIF or background animation that keeps going without stopping.

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Each tool helps you get creative and customize your content in different ways!

Let’s put them in action. You can create a video of your own or select any from the “Featured’ or ‘Recent’ to explore these tools. If you use your own, make a video with maximum settings available. It will let you explore these tools deeply. 

To help you understand these tools, we will select a video of a bear trying to fend off bees. 

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The tools are located at the bottom of the video editor. Click ‘Recut’ to start editing the video. 

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Click the three-dot button at the bottom of the reel. 

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In Sora AI, the Split and Slip tools are features that manipulate and organize your content creatively. Here’s what each one does:

Split: The Split tool lets you divide a video or animation into separate segments or clips. You can split it into smaller parts based on scenes, timing, or specific moments you want to focus on. It's useful if you want to isolate certain sections of a video to work on them individually or if you want to break down a long piece of content into more manageable pieces.

Slip: The Slip tool allows you to shift or move parts of a video or animation along the timeline without changing their length. It's like sliding a clip to a different position in the sequence. This is useful for fine-tuning the timing of different parts of your video or animation, helping to make everything flow just right without cutting or trimming the content.

Let’s test it out. Click the split button. It will split the video into two parts. You can extend a part and add a prompt to create something else, or you can delete a part to focus on one of them. 

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You can also grab the split frames and move them to adjust the sequence and timing of the clip. 

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If you want to increase the length of the video, select the duration in the tools area; the timeline will expand to 10 seconds. 

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You can add another 5 to 10-second video and join it with the previous frames by clicking a frame and entering the prompt. 

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Once you finish editing the clip, click the ‘Create’ button. This will create a video with your edits. 

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Remix

Click the ‘Remix’ button in the editing toolbar. Select variation 1 or variation 2. It allows you to create one or two versions of the same video. 

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Write a prompt for the remix and select a resolution. Select the remix strength. There are a few options here. You can choose strong, mild, subtle, or custom. The custom option gives you numbers to select where 1 is the weakest and 8th is the strongest remix variable. Select a strong remix. 

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Click the ‘Remix’ button to generate a video based on your prompt. It will remix the video and develop a new one. 

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The clip came out fantastic. Sora added a clip where a human with a gun approaches the bear from behind the trees. This is one of the best videos we created while writing this tutorial.

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Blend & Loop

You can blend and create loops in the video. This basically allows you to combine the generated video with another video. To do this, you have to upload a video or an image or choose another video from the library. 

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Adjust the blended regions using a curve. It will blend both videos together. The blend strength has several options: transition, sample, mix, or custom. We will choose ‘Sample’ to see what it can do. 

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It will create a separate video with the blend. 

That came out pretty amazing. See how the transition was smooth, blending both videos beautifully. 

The loop feature enables you to create a constant loop of selected frames. You can choose a long, short, or normal loop and select variations (one or two videos). 

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The looped video will be generated in a minute. 

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It generates the precise loop and extends it. The video will loop in the same frame over and over again.

That’s all Sora is offering right now. It’s an amazing video generator—experiment with prompts, blending, and remixing to create a masterpiece. You can use it anywhere you like. 

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