# What Are Ingredients

## Understanding Ingredients in Ava Studio

Ingredients are the assets that make up your video.\
Think of them as the raw materials you hand to the agent, it uses them to build, reference, and swap content across your scenes, so you're always working with your own actors, products, and visuals.\ <br>

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### Ingredients Are Flexible

Ingredients are arbitrary, so you can create an Ingredient for literally anything you want to reference in your video.

However, most templates and users tend to organise them into four common categories, since these cover the majority of what goes into an ad:

@actor&#x20;

* The person appearing in your video. You can upload a photo of your own talent or select from Ava Studio's Character Library.

@product&#x20;

* Your product visuals, such as an image of whatever you're advertising.

@broll

* Supporting footage used between or around your main scenes. B-rolls add context, movement, and visual variety to your video, for example, a screen recording of your app.

@text&#x20;

* Can we used to reference scripts you want your actor to say, captions, overlays, or any written content that appears in your video.

<img src="/files/rvaZE3QXBplTNMc6JyCd" alt="" height="341" width="624">

If your video needs something outside of these, a logo, a background, a specific prop, you can create a custom Ingredient for it and reference it the same way using an @ tag.

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### How Ingredients Work

Each Ingredient gets its own tag — @actor, @product, @broll, @text.&#x20;

These tags are how the agent and editor recognise and reference your assets throughout the project. You can rename any Ingredient tag to whatever makes sense for your project.

So if you want to call it @model instead of @actor, or @hero instead of @product, simply click on the tag and edit the name.&#x20;

<img src="/files/NjDgS4JWuikroHMAIoC1" alt="" height="529" width="462">

In prompts When writing or editing prompts manually, you can reference an Ingredient directly using its tag. For example:

"Show @actor holding @product in a bright, natural setting."

The agent knows exactly what @actor and @product refer to, so your assets get used correctly across every scene.

In Editor Mode Swapping out an Ingredient in the Ingredients panel updates it everywhere it appears across the timeline automatically, this save you the time of having to go scene by scene to swap ingredients for each ingredient for each generation.

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### Modifying Ingredients

You're always in control of your Ingredients before and after generation.

* Before generating — review the agent's/ template’s suggested Ingredients, choose to go with the suggestions or upload your own assets, and confirm when ready.
* After generating — head to the Ingredients panel to make quick swaps. Changing an Ingredient here will update it across the project.

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