1. What the Ads tab shows
One card per ad, newest first. Each card carries the finished ad, what it is doing, and a collapsed Raw footage folder holding every take you shot for it.
If you have not cut anything yet you see: Nothing here yet. Approve a script, film it, and hit Assemble — the finished ad shows up here on its own.
Footage that is not attached to a script groups under Unfiled footage.
2. Approving and rejecting takes
Open Raw footage on any card. Every take is listed with its size and length, and a-roll takes can carry a rough cut.
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Approve | Marks the take as one you would put money behind. The cut pulls from approved takes first. Unapprove reverses it. |
| Reject | Takes it out of consideration. It stays in the folder with a Rejected stamp. Restore reverses it. |
| Rough cut | A-roll only. Trims the dead air out of that take and reports what it removed, e.g. Removed 8s across 5 cuts. |
Takes cannot be deleted from this screen. Rejecting is the way to take one out of play.
If you filmed three takes and the second one is the good one, approve that one and reject the others. Otherwise the machine is choosing for you.
3. Assembling an ad
Assembling is one button, from any of three places:
- The Ads tab — Assemble the ad on a card that says Not cut yet.
- The Scripts tab — Assemble on a filmed script.
- The end of the b-roll shot list — Assemble my ad.
The machine transcribes the take, trims the silence, lays in your b-roll and burns in the captions. You do not touch any of it and there is nothing to edit afterwards.
The one thing you can set beforehand is how the captions look. Settings → Caption style carries the font (Sans, Serif, Condensed), the position (Lower or Middle), and the text and outline colours — Use brand colour takes the accent off your logo, Black and white puts it back. It applies to the next cut, so set it before you assemble. If your two colours are too close to read, the outline is overridden and the screen tells you.
4. While it is cutting
The card shows Cutting your ad… with an elapsed counter and the line this page updates itself when it is ready. That is literal — leave the page open and it will swap itself for the finished ad, or come back later and it will be waiting.
There is no percentage, on purpose. The elapsed seconds are the honest number.
When it lands, the meta line reads something like 18s · 3 cutaways · captions burned in.
5. The status stamps
| Stamp | Means |
|---|---|
| Not cut yet | You have footage but no finished ad. |
| Ready to run | Cut and finished, not published. |
| Publishing | Going up to Meta right now. |
| Live | Running in your Meta ad account. |
| Paused | Live campaign, currently stopped. |
| Failed | The publish attempt did not go through. |
On live ads, tapping the numbers block opens what the ad bought, spend, impressions, reach and clicks. Before Meta reports anything you will see No numbers back from Meta yet — it takes a few hours after it starts running.
6. Re-cutting
Re-cut makes a fresh version. Use it after you film a better take, approve it and reject the old one, or after you reword the script and film again.
While a re-cut runs, the card says Cutting a fresh version… this ad updates when it is ready. and keeps showing the existing ad. If the re-cut fails, the previous good cut stays exactly where it was — you cannot lose a working ad this way.
Re-cutting does not touch a campaign that is already running. To change what is live you have to publish the new cut.
7. When a cut fails
The card shows This ad did not finish cutting with the reason underneath, and a Try cutting it again button. Most failures are transient — try it once more first.
If it fails twice with the same message, send us that message from the support box on the Billing tab.