How much does it actually cost to turn a VOD into a week of clips? The real credit math

The most direct way to answer 'what does this actually cost' is to walk through one real job rather than quote an abstract per-credit rate. In OptimaClip's credit system, analysis (transcription and processing of the source video) costs 1 credit per minute of source video, rounded up, with a minimum of 1 credit — a 60-minute VOD costs 60 credits for that step alone, regardless of how many clips eventually get generated from it.

AI clip-candidate generation costs 1 credit per candidate clip the moment-detection step surfaces — a typical 60-minute VOD generating 8-10 candidate clips (a realistic range for an hour of solid content) adds roughly 8-10 more credits. Exporting a finished clip — the actual render, including captions burned in, which no longer costs extra as of OptimaClip's 2026-08-19 repricing — costs 1 credit per export.

Putting that together: a 60-minute VOD, processed for analysis (60 credits), generating 8 candidate clips (8 credits), with 6 of those actually exported and published (6 credits), totals 74 credits for a genuine week's worth of published short-form content from one recording. That's comfortably inside the Starter plan's 200 monthly credits with room for more than one VOD a month, and well inside the Creator plan's 500 credits for a weekly cadence of similar VODs.

The comparison worth making isn't just against a competitor's per-credit rate — it's against the realistic alternative of doing this manually or paying someone else to. A freelance editor charging per clip in the $15-$50+ range for even 6 finished clips runs $90-$300+ for that same single VOD, one time, versus a flat $19-$39/month subscription that covers that job plus several more within the same billing period.

For anyone trying to plan a repurposing budget before committing to a plan, this same math scales linearly with source length and clip count — the full formula (analysis credits + candidate-generation credits + export credits) is documented in detail on the credits doc, so it's possible to estimate the real cost of a specific show's typical VOD length and clip volume before ever submitting a job.