Animate a still image with Frames and Ingredients

A picture you already like can open a clip. It might be a product photo, a frame you generated under AI Gen and Image, or a still from your timeline. The Video tab takes pictures as references and offers two ways to use them, named Frames and Ingredients.

Attach a picture

Any of these puts a picture in the prompt box:

• Drag an image or video in from the Media tab, the Library, a generated tile or the timeline.
• Type @ and pick an item from the list. A bare @ with nothing after it browses everything, grouped by source.
• Click the + button (Add reference) and choose Upload file, or pick from the Timeline, Media or Library lists.
• Paste a file into the box, or drop it on the panel.

The choice between the two modes sits in the How references are used control. It appears in the toolbar under the prompt box, and again behind the More settings button. The form opens in Ingredients.

Frames: the picture opens the shot

Switch How references are used to Frames. Two slots appear above the prompt:

• Start is the opening frame. The render plays your picture as its literal first frame.
• End is the closing frame. Not every model uses it, so check the result.

Click a slot to upload a file or pick from the Timeline, Media or Library lists, or drop a picture straight onto it. The swap button, titled Swap start and end, trades the two. An End picture only makes sense alongside a Start picture.

The picture already supplies the look, so the prompt can describe only the motion: "The camera pushes in slowly while steam rises from the cup."

Ingredients: the picture keeps identity

In Ingredients mode, attached pictures act as identity anchors. They tell the render what a person, product or place looks like, and the prompt describes the new scene. Your prompt goes out as you wrote it. A model accepts a limited number of reference images, so attach the clearest ones.

A reference photo of a backpack can show up on a trail, on a train or on a desk. That is the case for Ingredients: the same object placed in a new setting.

A video reference can carry a pinned moment. Hover its chip in the prompt box and a card opens with a slider and a timestamp, so you choose which moment the render reads. If the playhead already sits on that clip on the timeline, the card opens on that moment.

Which mode to use:

• Use Frames when this exact picture should open the shot.
• Use Ingredients when this person or object should appear in a new shot.
• Use Frames with both a Start and an End picture when you know both ends of the move and want the render to fill the middle.

Ask the assistant to do it

Ask the AI assistant to "animate this image" with the picture selected or attached. The picture becomes the literal first frame, and the prompt describes only the motion. With an image or video reference and no such instruction, the assistant first designs an opening frame from it with the image model, shows you that still in the chat, and then renders the clip from that frame.

Try it on your own footage

Drop one picture on the Video tab in DepCut, switch to Frames, and write one sentence about how the camera should move.