How to Choose an AI Video Tool (Decide by Job, Not by Demo)

Choose an AI video tool by asking one question: are you shipping a talking-head from a script, generating footage you don’t have, or turning a long video into shorts you already recorded? Every “best AI video generator” list ranks by raw model quality — that’s the wrong axis. The tool that wins is the one that matches what you’re starting with.

Answer 1: A script, need a talking-head → HeyGen

Weekly shorts, founder-led content, or localizing one video into a dozen languages without a camera setup. HeyGen’s Avatar IV crossed the believability line on a phone screen, and the script-to-video loop collapses production time to a script and a render. Budget honestly: the $29 Creator sticker covers light use, but real weekly output with priority processing runs closer to $60/month once credit add-ons land.

Answer 2: No footage exists yet, need it generated → Runway

Concept shots, mood pieces, b-roll for a scene you can’t film, or accent footage inside a real edit. Runway aggregates its own Gen-4.5 plus Veo 3.1, Kling 3.0, and Seedance 2.0 under one subscription, so it’s the sane way to buy generative video instead of separate seats per model. Credits burn fast — 25 credits per second on Gen-4.5 — so budget by seconds of finished output, not by month. Standard’s 625 monthly credits is roughly 25 seconds; Pro is the realistic floor for weekly generative work.

Answer 3: A long recording exists, need shorts out of it → OpusClip

A podcast, webinar, or stream that already happened, and the job is finding the 3–5 clips worth publishing. OpusClip’s virality scoring and auto-captioning turn an hour of source into ranked, ready-to-post vertical clips — Starter at $15/month covers a weekly cadence, but the free tier’s watermark makes it demo-only for a monetized channel.

The trap to avoid

Buying Runway to make a talking-head video (HeyGen does it for a fraction of the cost and the credit math), or trying to make HeyGen repurpose an hour-long podcast (it doesn’t ingest source footage — that’s OpusClip’s job). Each tool assumes a different starting point: a script, nothing, or a finished recording. Route by what you actually have, not by which demo reel looked best.

Quick reference

You’re starting from…	Tool	Entry cost
A script, need an avatar on camera	HeyGen	$29/mo ($24/mo annual)
Nothing — footage needs to be generated	Runway	$12/mo (annual, Standard)
A long recording, need shorts pulled from it	OpusClip	$15/mo (Starter)

Tools need jobs. Name what footage you’re starting with, and the video tool picks itself.