How to use a commercial as a reference for your own product video
Upload the commercial you admire to Vizard Agent along with your own footage. Vizard Agent studies the reference's pacing, shot order and camera moves, finds the beat grid of its own chosen track, tracks where your product sits in each of your clips, and builds an original cut to that structure.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Say plainly that the reference is a reference. Vizard Agent studies the structure rather than lifting from it, and the clearer you are that you want your own footage in that shape, the less ambiguity there is about what ends up on screen. Four or five clips from different angles is a workable minimum.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
What you admire in an ad is almost never the footage. It's the pacing, the order of the shots and the moment the music drops. So both sides are analysed before cutting: the reference for its shape, and your clips for where the product actually sits in the frame at each moment. In the session behind this article it:
- Extracted a frame grid from the reference and studied its pacing and shot structure in detail, twice.
- Downloaded and probed the user's clips, sampled frames from each and pulled key frames at full detail.
- Searched the music library, downloaded two candidate tracks, analysed their energy and tempo, and found the beat grid and the drop.
- Tracked the product's position and size in every clip across time, so a reference shot that fills the frame could be matched with a clip that can.
- Checked what happens later in each clip, since the usable moment is often not at the start, then located the display font and rendered all the graded shots.
- Delivered a vertical cut at 1080x1920, 30fps and 20.93 seconds.
When does this not work well?
Structure is a legitimate thing to learn from, and the material inside it is not. Vizard Agent builds from your own footage and a licensable music library, never the reference's footage or track. Your footage also sets the ceiling: a reference shot on a stage can't be matched by a clip filmed on a kitchen table, and four clips can't fill twenty cuts.
Common questions
Is it legal to use an ad as a reference? Studying pacing and structure is normal creative practice. Using the ad's actual footage or music is not, and Vizard Agent builds from your material instead.
How many clips do I need? Four or five of different angles is a workable minimum for a twenty-second cut.
Can it match the reference's music? Vizard Agent finds a licensable track with comparable energy and tempo, and cuts to that track's own beat grid.