I sometimes get asked how I make some of the images, videos and resources that I do. So I decided to document the making of a video today. I have a new YouTube channel, which I set up to compliment my new Wellness website, ZenBliss Vibes. However, I don’t have any content on the YouTube channel yet. So I decided to make a Guided Meditation video, using various AI Tools. Now there are many ways to achieve this, but I wanted to try using Studio LTX today. I was very excited when Studio LTX was first announced and put myself on the waiting list immediately. I waited with growing excitement for many months. But by the time it was launched, I had got busy with other projects and tools and didn’t get to making anything in Studio LTX yet. The thing that had originally attracted me to it was the feature that enabled you to upload a script and have it create a multi-scened film for you. I planned to use it to make films of some of the books I had written, one of which already has a movie script.
The Script
I may have a script for the movie of my novels, but I needed a script for my Guided Meditation video. I asked ChatGPT to write one for me…
Me: I’d like to create some content for Zen Bliss Vibes. Now what I’d like to do is create a script for a film, a YouTube film, which will be a meditation. And it’s a meditation that’s going to take the listener on a long journey that starts from, let me see, starts from a cliff top perhaps, or mountain top, and makes their soul ascend and fly over valleys and countryside and towns and taking in all sorts of incredible sights and beauty and experiences, elevating their soul and creating a great sense of euphoria and bliss. So I’d like you to write me a script that’s about 5,000 words long. Can you do that?
ChatGPT: The meditation script has been created, inviting the listener on a transcendental journey filled with beauty, peace, and bliss. Let me know if you’d like any adjustments or additional elements to enhance it further.
Me: I love this. It’s absolutely brilliant. But it occurs to me that by starting at the top of a cliff or mountain, there’s a chance we’re encouraging people to jump off cliffs, and we don’t want to cause any harm. So let’s make the start of it a beautiful meadow. We’ll start in a beautiful meadow and end in a beautiful meadow.
ChatpGPT: The script has been updated to begin and end in a beautiful meadow, ensuring a safe and serene experience for the listener. Let me know if there are any other tweaks you’d like!
At this point I had a full script created for the video. This was the introduction and first scene of the script:
Meditation Script: Ascension to Bliss
Introduction
Welcome to this guided meditation. Today, we will embark on a transcendental journey that begins in a beautiful meadow and carries your soul across vast landscapes, touching the heights of beauty and bliss. Find a quiet place where you can sit or lie down comfortably, free from interruptions. Close your eyes, take a deep breath in, and let it out slowly. Feel yourself becoming grounded, present, and ready to ascend.
Section 1: The Meadow
Begin by imagining yourself standing in a lush, vibrant meadow. The air is warm and filled with the gentle hum of life. A soft breeze carries the sweet fragrance of wildflowers and fresh grass. You are safe, calm, and completely at peace in this moment.
Look around you. The meadow is alive with colors—yellow buttercups, purple lavender, and white daisies sway gently in the breeze. Butterflies flit from flower to flower, their delicate wings catching the sunlight. In the distance, you hear the soothing babble of a stream winding its way through the landscape.
Breathe deeply, drawing in the energy of this sacred place. With each breath, feel your connection to the earth grounding you, even as you prepare to ascend.
Inhale deeply. As you exhale, feel your body grow lighter. With every breath, the weight of your worries dissolves, leaving you buoyant and free.
Studio LTX – Making the video
Now it was time to go to Studio LTX and start a new project. It offers two options for getting started:
- Develop concept with AI
- Stick to the script
So I could have got Studio LTX to have done the whole thing and written the script for me. But, having already generated a script I liked in ChatGPT, I decided to go with the “Stick to the script” opion.
Studio LTX then worked its magic and turned the script into a series of scenes and camera shots. The screenshot below shows just the first scene, but there were several more.
For each shot, it is possible to work extensively on the content. Click the “Shot editor” button to access the Shot editor interface.
The shot editor offers many options for each shot. You can choose to use the image that has been generated for you, regenerate a new one, upload a picture of your own to use as base – or various other options.
The shot editor lets you choose a new angle for the generated image it has made for you and let’s you change the shot location (including lighting and weather!), the shot type (e.g. Wide Shot, Close-up etc) and shot style.
The Motion section of the Shot Editor enables you to control camera movement and offers various options for embedding a character, along with lip syncing. It even appears to be capable of creating a character from your own photos to put in the scene.
Rather than commit too much time to fiddling with each shot, I decided to see what would be produced for me at this point. So I hit the Preview button. Studio LTX then went to work to produce some kind of preview of my movie…
I wasn’t sure what to make of this preview. The sound was all over the place – overpowering music and barely audible narration. And whilst the imagery was lovely, it was moving far too fast.
It was clear that we are somewhere down the line with this video, but what it was producing at this point needed a lot of work.
Although I had provided the script for the voice-over, the rendered clips were not long enough to accommodate what the narrator should say in each clip. On further exploration, I saw that it is possible to set the length of the clip that is generated. But this would take a lot of work and fiddling and was something that I felt that the tool should have automated.
I decided to test LTX Studio differently – to allow it to generate the entire scriptand plan itself from just an idea. It did a good job of laying out scenes and camera shots again, but the imagery was not to my taste and the video animation was not suitable for the kind of meditation video I was aiming for. The animation displayed the usual failings of AI animation – things like faces and hands looking a bit “off”. Also, the transitions between the clips were sharp, rather than the smooth transitions that I would want for a meditation video. I couldn’t see a way to control that.
This was the opening scene it designed and rendered. I thought this was perfectly good.
This is an example of the dodgy animation however…
It was once again clear that a lot of work would need to be done to swap out scenes that involved animations that were likely to disappoint.
After two abortive attempts to create short, simple, meditation videos, I had only 243 computing seconds left on my free account this month, out of an initial 3600 seconds. Obviously, it was not going to be possible to complete much of either video within that budget.
I considered purchasing a subscription. However, having not got very far on these two simple tests with the allowance of 3600 computing seconds, I doubted that I would even complete a single 5 minute meditation film using even the top tier of their subscriptions.
I am not sure what projects could be fulfilled by this tool and pricing, but it had become very clear to me that it was not going to be appropriate for what I wanted to achieve.
It’s a shame. I had been very excited about LTX Studio for a long time. But it hasn’t turned out to be quite what I had hoped for. In time, I think it has the potential to be everything I had wanted, but it isn’t there yet. I would like to see it overcome the AI hallucinations of the animations, provide options for shot transitions (apologies if it already does and I didn’t spot it!) and more options for visual style and grading – and the pricing and computing seconds allowance needs to change drastically.
They might take inspiration from Midjourney with regards the character and style seeding that is now possible. I think that would help put the user on better control of the output.
What it does very well though is lay a film out in terms of scenes and shots and I appreciated the ability to change the type of shots.
Like many tools, I found Studio LTX to do some things brilliantly and other things disappointingly. If the computing seconds allowance had been higher, I might have been able to get a better tune out of it. But for now, I must withdraw disappointed and return to my previous method of video making i.e. Midjourney for imagery, Runway for animation, Eleven Labs for voice-over and Capcut for video editing.
