Guides desk
AI video guides
How the work actually gets done, including the part about consent that no vendor blog has a reason to write.
The short answer
Three guides, covering one format. The definitional one untangles three unrelated meanings of the same phrase, the craft one gives the four numbers that decide how a recording looks, and the legal one covers what cloning a real face obliges you to get in writing first. Each was last checked on 2026-08-25.
Where to start
Three guides, and each answers a different question. Most people arrive wanting the first one without knowing it, because the phrase at the center of this subject means three unrelated things and nobody says so.
- What even is this? The definitional guide. It resolves a confusion the other two assume away, and it is the one to read if the search results you have seen so far seem to disagree with each other.
- I have to record one on Thursday. The practitioner guide, which is numbers rather than encouragement: focal length, light position, microphone distance, and the two edits that fix a frame that never changes.
- Someone wants to clone my face, or I want to clone someone else's. The consent guide, before anything is recorded rather than after.
Each one opens by saying what evidence it rests on, which is the standard every page on this publication is held to. None of them was written by someone who has run the software, and all three say so on their own first screen.
The guides
Start here
Talking head video, explained
One phrase, three meanings: a shot type from film and television, a software category that borrowed the name, and an insult. The pages ranking for it each define one and ignore the others.
Practitioner
How to make a talking head video
Six of the ten results for that question are video, and you cannot pause one to re-read a number. This is the reference: focal length, light position, mic distance, and the two edits that fix a static frame.
Before you clone anyone
AI avatar consent and likeness rights
Five clauses decide whether an AI likeness agreement is survivable, from practising attorneys. A platform tickbox is none of them.
What a guide here has to do
The same three conditions the rest of the site runs on, adapted to a how-to rather than a price table.
- Numbers, not demonstrations. A guide's advantage over a video is that a figure can be re-read. If a number exists, it goes on the page.
- A named source for any judgement. This desk has not run these tools, so anything about how they perform is attributed to someone who has.
- The limits, stated. Where the evidence runs out, the guide says so rather than filling the gap with confidence.
The full standard, including what this desk refuses to publish and what a payment cannot buy, is in the editorial policy. The editorial policy this page is written to.
The guide nobody else writes
Consent and likeness rights. Every vendor in this category has a help page explaining how to upload a consent recording, and none has a reason to explain what that recording does not cover.
It is also the guide with the highest cost of being wrong. A poorly framed video is a wasted afternoon, and an unbounded grant of someone's likeness is a different order of problem. Nothing in it is legal advice, and it says so before the checklist rather than after it.
- The first two guides save you time.
- The third can save you an argument you cannot afford, which is why it sits alongside them rather than in a footer nobody opens.
What these guides deliberately leave out
Gear recommendations by model, for one. The physics of a lens and a microphone ages slowly and product names age fast, and this desk earns no commission on either.
Software walkthroughs are the other omission. Editors rearrange their menus every release, so the guides name the operations that matter rather than the buttons that carry them out this month.
Where the rest of it lives
These guides deliberately stop at the point where a question becomes a purchase. That boundary is not modesty: a page that explains a format and then sells you a subscription to it is doing two jobs badly.
- What the tools cost, with every figure dated: the pricing desk.
- Which one to buy, on one derived unit: the comparisons desk.
- Whether a given one is any good: the reviews desk.
Work in AI video?
We take pitches from people building and using these tools. Tell us what you know that the vendor pages do not.
Pitch a guest postStill comparing?
Every figure on this site carries the page it was read from and the date it was read.
See the pricing deskBy the Humva Desk. Checked against primary sources and updated .