The Future of VFX Without After Effects
The boundary between the real and the fantastical is shrinking, and you no longer need a timeline full of keyframes to prove it. Runway’s Aleph is a chat-based video editing model that lets you conjure visual effects from a simple prompt, a short clip, and your imagination. Ask it to add furniture, change the weather, restyle a scene, swap outfits, or even generate a new camera angle, and it takes a shot at doing the heavy lifting for you. If you’ve ever wished you could try “VFX without After Effects,” Aleph is the most compelling taste of that future yet.
What Is Aleph, and Why It’s Different
Aleph lives inside Runway as a conversational, in-context editor for real footage. Instead of layering effects and masks by hand, you describe the change you want, optionally attach a reference image, and let Aleph attempt the transformation across the whole clip with temporal consistency. It’s designed to understand scene geometry, lighting, and materials enough to re-style, re-light, and even reframe shots, all while maintaining continuity.
- Chat Mode vs. Tool Mode: You can iterate conversationally (great for discovery) or switch to a more parameter-driven flow for precision.
- Short, surgical edits: As of now, Aleph operates on short clips and excels at targeted changes and stylization, not end-to-end editing.
Getting Started with Aleph
Aleph is refreshingly simple to try. According to Runway’s docs, it works best when you give it a clean, well-lit clip and an unambiguous prompt.
Step-by-step quick start
1) Start a new session in Runway
2) Upload a short clip (Aleph processes up to the first 5 seconds per generation)
3) Add a reference image if you want Aleph to absorb its style, palette, or lighting
4) Type a clear prompt using an action verb: “Add,” “Remove,” “Change,” “Relight,” or “Generate a new angle”
5) Review, refine, and iterate
For official guidance on session setup, supported formats, and constraints, see Runway’s Creating with Aleph.
Prompt patterns that work
- “Add a modern gray sofa in the center of the room”
- “Change the time of day to midnight; heavy rain and reflections on the ground”
- “Make her sweater dark green cable-knit, natural fibers”
- “Generate a reverse angle of this scene from behind the counter”
Tip: Runway’s concise prompt guide is useful for learning structure and scope: Aleph Prompting Guide.
What Aleph Can Do Right Now
Stylizing with influence
Give Aleph a style reference—anime art, film stills, or design boards—and ask it to restyle the footage. It won’t paste the exact objects from your reference into the scene, but it will push your clip toward that aesthetic: color, texture, lighting, and even material feel can shift in surprisingly coherent ways.
Environmental transformations
From snow and rain to golden-hour relights, Aleph can alter the environment without a reshoot. “Make it winter with light snow” or “Change lighting to neon purple and cyan” are the kinds of instructions it parses well. For a practical overview of what changes hold up best on real footage, see the examples and caveats in Creating with Aleph.
Generating new perspectives
This is the sci-fi part: request a fresh angle from footage you already shot—wider, tighter, higher, even a reverse angle. It’s not a perfect reconstruction of reality, but it can be an excellent ideation tool or a stylized alternative. Start with grounded asks (“move the camera two feet to the left”) before jumping to wild parallax.
Object, outfit, and background edits
Ask Aleph to remove background bystanders, swap a t-shirt color, or replace props. These changes tend to succeed when the subject is well-isolated and motion is moderate. For more complex composites, you can combine Aleph’s result with traditional editing.
Key Specs, Limits, and Workflow Considerations
| Spec | Current Aleph Behavior |
|---|---|
| Max clip length | Up to the first 5 seconds per generation |
| Cost | 15 credits per second of generated video (per Runway docs) |
| Output resolution | Generates at 720p by default; optional upscaling available |
| 4K workflow | Upscale completed generations to 4K inside Runway |
| Supported aspect ratios | Multiple ARs supported (e.g., 16:9, 9:16, 1:1) |
| Max input size | 64 MB per uploaded clip (typical limit for Aleph) |
| Turnaround time | Often ~1–2 minutes per generation, depending on load |
- Full setup and limits: Creating with Aleph
- 4K specifics: how to upscale and what it does and doesn’t change: generate videos in 4K
- Prompt examples and structure: Aleph Prompting Guide
Practical Tips to Get Better Results
Prep your footage
- Keep motion manageable. Fast, chaotic motion is harder to track coherently.
- Favor clean lighting. Mixed color temperatures and flicker make relighting tougher.
- Keep the subject separated. Clear foreground/background separation aids edits.
Write precise prompts
- Lead with an action verb: Add rain; Change to dusk; Remove the crowd; Generate a wide shot.
- Specify materials and mood: “velvet armchair,” “matte finish,” “low-slung fog,” “moody, high-contrast.”
- If you have a target look, attach a reference image to anchor Aleph’s decisions.
Iterate in small steps
Ask for one change at a time, evaluate, then build. Complex, multi-part prompts can produce muddier results than a series of smaller, chained edits.
Pro tip: If an edit almost works but drifts on a few frames, try re-generating the same prompt once or twice. Stochastic variation can push it over the line.
Known Quirks and How to Work Around Them
- Motion complexity: Very fast motion or intricate textures (fine patterns, mesh, hair) can wobble or smear. Consider stabilizing footage, or ask for gentler changes.
- 720p base output: Aleph generates at 720p; use the built-in upscaler for delivery at 4K. It won’t “invent” extra detail beyond what the model can infer, but it’s serviceable for many web/social uses. Details here: generate videos in 4K.
- Identity and continuity: Most wardrobe and style swaps keep overall identity intact, but don’t expect pixel-perfect consistency across every frame in high-motion sequences.
- Reference logic: Style references influence mood, color, and materials; they don’t insert the literal object into your scene.
Building Sequences with Other Tools
Aleph plays nicely in a broader AI pipeline. In our tests, we paired it with script and audio tools to build more complete sequences:
- Use Aleph for the heavy visual lift: restyle, relight, remove clutter, add atmosphere.
- Use a design library to gather style references and prop ideas.
- Use voice or sound tools for narration and SFX to match the new visual mood.
This “mix and match” approach can produce results that would have taken days with traditional VFX, especially for concept pieces, mood films, and social content.
When to Choose Aleph vs. Traditional VFX
- Choose Aleph when speed, ideation, and stylistic exploration matter more than exact realism: mood reels, look-dev, previz, and stylized social content.
- Choose traditional tools when you need deterministic, frame-perfect results (precision roto, match-move, photoreal composites), or multi-minute sequences with strict continuity.
If you want a broader industry view of what Aleph signals for post-production, we covered the rollout, use cases, and early experiments in our deeper Aleph explainer.
Final Thoughts
Aleph is a meaningful leap toward conversational post-production: you describe the change, it proposes a version, and you sculpt via language. It’s not flawless; fast action and fine detail still push it, but that’s part of the creative dance. The short-clip limit encourages modular thinking: transform shots in five-second beats, then stitch them into a cohesive sequence. With practice, the rhythm becomes intuitive.
If you’re a filmmaker, content creator, or VFX-curious storyteller, this is a rare moment: the barrier between idea and execution is thin enough to poke through with a single prompt. Try a small scene, iterate boldly, and see how far Aleph will follow your imagination. Your next “how did they do that?” moment might be only five seconds and one great prompt away.
