Learn three fast workflows for creating high-quality videos in HeyGen using Video Agent, templates, and AI video apps to boost productivity and scale your content.
If you’re staring at a blank canvas wondering how to get from idea to production-ready video, you’re not alone. That’s exactly the gap we designed HeyGen to close.
In this session, April Cho Wu (Product Manager) and Bin Liu (Engineering Lead) walk through three core ways to start and streamline your creative workflow in HeyGen:
- Create with AI using Video Agent
- Start with a template in AI Studio
- Speed things up with specialized apps
This post breaks down each path, the strengths of each, and some practical tips on when and how to use them together.
1. Create with AI using Video Agent
Video Agent is HeyGen’s prompt-based video creation experience. Think of it as your AI producer: you give it a brief, and it turns that into a multi-scene, avatar-driven video with B-roll, captions, and motion graphics.
How Video Agent works
From your HeyGen homepage, you’ll see Video Agent featured prominently. You can access it directly or via the create button in the left navigation.
You start by giving the agent a prompt. That prompt can be:
- A short idea
- e.g. “an asian male tech worker wearing glasses, standing in the HeyGen office, introducing the power of digital twin avatar technology and our latest video agent product.”
- A full script or shot list
- e.g. “00–05 seconds: avatar introduces pinot noir. 05–15 seconds: map of france, USA, new zealand. 15–30 seconds: explain body, tannin, acidity,” and so on.
Video Agent then:
- Reads your prompt
- Generates a plan (language, orientation, avatar, script, structure)
- Lets you confirm or tweak that plan
- Produces a video that’s typically 80–90% production-ready
The process takes a bit of time to render, but you’re skipping hours of manual scripting, editing, and B-roll sourcing.
Short vs. detailed prompts
Bin showed two types of use cases using his wine education examples:
- Short prompt:
- He simply told agent to “teach WSET 2 audience about pinot noir,” picked an existing avatar, and let the system handle:
- Script generation
- Structure
- B-roll and visuals
- Captions and timing
- He simply told agent to “teach WSET 2 audience about pinot noir,” picked an existing avatar, and let the system handle:
- Detailed prompt:
- For the same topic, he used a long prompt describing:
- Specific shots
- Which regions to cover (France, USA, New Zealand)
- Concepts like body, tannin, acidity
- Target audience and tone
- For the same topic, he used a long prompt describing:
In both cases, Video Agent followed his instructions, but the detailed prompt gave him more predictable, structured output.
Adding your own assets
Video Agent isn’t limited to stock visuals.
You can:
- Attach your own photo and ask agent to use it as the avatar
- Upload a PDF or document and have agent turn it into an explainer video
Bin demoed this by:
- Uploading a personal photo to act as the avatar
- Uploading a technical PDF
- Prompting agent to “make a video about this topic using my uploaded image as the avatar”
Video Agent then used his image as the presenter and pulled concepts from the PDF, supported by motion graphics and illustrations.
Editing Agent videos in AI Studio
If you like 80% of what Video Agent created but want control over the remaining 20%, you can click edit in AI Studio.
Inside AI Studio, you can:
- Replace or delete B-roll you don’t like
- Add or swap media from HeyGen’s library
- Upload your own images and clips
- Adjust text, layout, and visual timing
Critically, if you don’t change the avatar or script, regenerating will not consume extra avatar 4 credits, because those segments are reused. If you do switch to a different avatar, you’ll consume new avatar credits for those sections.
2. Start with templates in AI Studio
If you prefer more control than a fully automated agent or you’re building structured content like training or explainers, templates and AI Studio is a powerful combo.
Why start from templates?
From the HeyGen homepage or studio, go to the templates tab. these templates:
- Give you a ready-made structure (intro, content slides, outro)
- Are especially suited for PPT-style explainers, educational content, or concept walkthroughs
- Can get you to about 80% done very quickly
You can choose from both landscape and portrait formats, depending on where your content will live (e.g. slides vs social feeds).
Customizing a template
When you click create with ai studio on a template, you’ll enter the editor where you can:
- Swap the avatar with your own
- Edit text, captions, and headings
- Adjust branding elements (colors, logos, fonts)
- Change orientation if needed
April walked through an example of:
- Opening a template
- Replacing the default avatar with her own
- Tweaking slide content to match a specific use case
Building your own branded templates
If you’re regularly creating similar video formats, such as internal training, onboarding, or recurring series, building your own templates saves a ton of time.
You can:
- Set video orientation (portrait for social, landscape for training)
- Design consistent intros and outros
- Drop in your brand colors, logo, and layout
- Choose a default avatar for that template
- Add placeholder captions or filler script
Once saved, your template becomes reusable. Every new project built from it starts on-brand and consistent, so you’re not reinventing the wheel for each video.
3. Speed up production with apps
Beyond Video Agent and templates, HeyGen includes a growing set of apps designed to supercharge specific workflows: translation, product ads, B-roll, podcasts, and more.
Here are a few that came up in the session.
Translate video
The translate video app lets you:
- Drop in an existing video link
- Translate it into up to 175 languages and dialects
- Choose between different translation modes depending on your use case
This is especially useful if you already have strong content in one language and want to localize it without reshooting.
Product ads with image and avatar
If you’re creating UGC-style product ads, there’s an app designed specifically for that workflow.
You can:
- Upload a photo of your product
- Choose an avatar
- Generate image assets where the avatar appears alongside the product
- Add a script to turn that into a polished ad video
Once created, that avatar-with-product also becomes usable in AI Studio, so you can reuse the same look in multiple scenes or videos.
AI B-roll and video generator
For people who asked, “how do you create B-roll?” This is where HeyGen’s AI video generator and related tools come in.
You can:
- Generate AI videos directly from apps
- Specify model, orientation, audio, and a detailed prompt
- Use the output as B-roll or standalone sequences
These generated clips automatically show up in your media inside the AI Studio (for example under something like “video generator”), ready to drop into any project.
You can also trigger the same AI generation tools inside the AI Studio itself, which is often the most seamless flow: edit your video, see where you need a visual, generate the asset on the spot.
Multi-avatar and podcast-style formats
Many teams want multi-speaker formats: two or more avatars talking to each other, “podcast,” or “panel” style.
Right now, you can experiment with that using the video podcast app. Bin also mentioned that the team is actively working on richer multi-speaker support directly inside Video Agent, with a focus on:
- High-quality interactions
- Less hallucination
- Support for multiple speakers (not just two)
Prompting tips for Video Agent
A big chunk of the Q&A circled back to prompting. some quick best practices from Bin’s experience working with customers:
- Be as detailed as you can
- Specify scenes, durations, style, visual references, regions, audience level, tone, and so on.
- Use AI chat tools to help you
- Many users draft their video agent prompts using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and others, then paste that into the Video Agent.
- Iterate toward your “golden prompt”
- Most teams land on a few prompt patterns or templates that consistently produce on-brand results for their use case.
For now, prompting is your main control surface for Agent, but as Bin hinted, future versions will give you more direct control over style and branding inside the agent flow itself.
Managing video length and credits
A couple of practical points came up around length and usage:
- To control video length, specify timing in your prompt
- e.g. “00–10 seconds: hook,” “10–30 seconds: explanation,” etc.
- Video Agent uses the same credit system as Avatar IV, since it leverages that technology under the hood
- Even if you use up Avatar IV credits, HeyGen still offers an unlimited mode where:
- You can keep creating videos
- Avatar and asset quality may be lower than Avatar IV
- You’re not blocked from continuing to produce content
This lets you explore and experiment without worrying that every iteration will burn through your top-tier credits.
Putting it all together
To recap, there are three main ways to kickstart and streamline your video creation workflow in HeyGen:
- Create with AI using Video Agent
- Ideal for concept-to-video in one step
- Great for social content, intros, explainers, and B-roll-rich videos
- Start with templates in AI Studio
- Best for repeatable formats like training, onboarding, and structured explainers
- Supports brand consistency and reusable layouts
- Accelerate with apps
- Translate existing videos into new markets
- Build UGC-style product ads
- Generate AI B-roll and visual assets
- Explore multi-avatar and podcast formats
Used together, these tools let you move from “I have an idea” to “I have a polished video” with far less friction and without needing a traditional production team for every project.
